


summerland

by Kypros



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bi-Sexual Steve Harrington, Boys with feelings, Coming of Age, Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Drinking & Talking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings Realization, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gay Jonathan Byers, Graduation, Jonathan Byers & Nancy Wheeler Friendship, Light Angst, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Language, Post-Break Up, Post-Season/Series 03, Recreational Drug Use, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Friendship, Slow Burn, Steve Harrington Has Bad Parents, Unexplored Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-23 06:13:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 80,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20238064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kypros/pseuds/Kypros
Summary: “It’s not your fault if those people weren’t prepared to grow with you." Steve's voice is slow and soft, like the first warm embrace of a summer breeze following a particularly cold winter. “And for those who don’t...well, fuck ‘em.”Then, he feels it. Fingers, quiet and hesitant, pressing gently against his own. They linger only for a moment—And then, they’re gone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place post-season 03. Hopper is alive and the Byers never moved.

The park downtown near the old Melvald’s building is unusually silent with the wet, humid air of early summer stilled to the point of an unnatural quiet where even the burning ash of a lit cigarette could be heard crackling in the night. It would be peaceful, Jonathan thinks, if not for the unrelenting pounding of his own heart, so loud and noisy that he feels as though he’s gone momentarily deaf. Then, Nancy looks at him—his ex-girlfriend of thirty seconds—and his heart breaks.

His explanation for their needed break-up had been underwhelming and terribly simple. It didn’t matter: she still looks at him as though this particular moment was something she had not yet thought to conceive; _pleading _with him through a confused murmur as to when it was exactly that he decided to move on without her. Asking silently with bewildered eyes and a trembling lip what _precise_ moment was it when he knew things between them were going to end.

Nancy Wheeler was always a girl with a plan, and Jonathan Byers breaking up with her three days before their high school graduation wasn't part of it.

It hurts him though, because he can’t give her those answers. He’s not sure himself—he just knew he couldn’t keep doing it. Doing _them_. And it wasn’t that he never felt anything for her. In fact, he cared for her a great deal. Nancy Wheeler was a beautiful human being with a beautiful purpose in life, and he really wished that some part of him could have loved her in the way she deserved to be loved. He really did.

“Did you expect something more of me?” Jonathan diverts, gently, quietly.

“No,” Nancy lies, and Jonathan feels the sting of her calculated meanness, but he can’t bring himself to blame her for it. Instead, he is very pointed in the way he does not look at her as she slumps into the park bench, and before he can react, he sees that her fingers are formed into tightly coiled fists.

“_Queer?_” she then murmurs to herself, like she just can’t believe it. Like what he’s told her is some classless, in bad-taste joke. Her fists slam heavy against her thighs, but Jonathan notes that she isn’t crying. Like she can't fully blame him for this. Instead, she sits motionless and stares out at the darkening skies ahead, her chest heaving in defeat. When he tries to ask her if she’s going to be okay, she does not respond.

Blinking, Jonathan exhales heavily and stands to go. In place of Nancy’s lack of emotional response to this otherwise heart-breaking decision, he feels wind-dizzy and breathless. In a certain sense, he is also smart enough to know that _this_ is not his fault. He is human enough to know that knowing doesn’t help anything. He is desperate enough to hope that all of this is a dream. That maybe tomorrow he’ll wake up and find that he didn’t just dump Nancy Wheeler in the park near the old Melvald’s. That maybe tomorrow he won’t feel this all-encompassing _guilt._

Then, he steps forwards. His eyes are closed, but there is a furrow between his brow and an unrelenting pang of hurt in every line of his limbs as he walks away. Then, Nancy is calling after him (“Jonathan, _Jonathan,_ _wait_—do you need to talk about this?") and even now, Nancy is still Nancy: perfect and caring and kind, and the guilt he feels inside of him swallows him whole.

Jonathan doesn’t respond, and the next time he sees her is at their high school graduation.

\---

“It’s wonderful of course, to have you all here today to witness such a special moment for our graduating class of students of Hawkins High School.”

The principal of their school is uncharacteristically brushed out of drab browns and muted grays and introduces herself in flowing satin taffeta and deep blues. Line by line, she recites a lengthy opening speech, and as master of ceremonies she seems to be in no hurry to speed things along. Jonathan of course, with a surname like Byers, is stuck in the front row of the whole debacle, and with each passing minute he can feel an expounding hangover catching up to him.

Getting drunk to mute the pain of his overwhelming deficiencies as a person was apparently a family trait. His father would have been so proud. 

He flattens himself against the chair, fingers curling and uncurling impatiently and listens to the rest of the speech with distracted ears. His mother, alongside Will and his friends, are lingering near the back exit, not impatient, but equally distracted by the sticky humidity brought forth by the overwhelming amount of bodies crammed into the gymnasium. And from the way he had noticed Will jostling back and forth on his feet earlier, Jonathan can tell that he really just wants to go home. He gets it, he really does. The patient etiquette required for attending a graduation is truly arresting, but does anybody _really_ want to be here? He purses his lips, unthinking and tries to concentrate on not expelling the empty contents of his stomach all down the front of his black gown.

He shifts in his seat and turns ever so slightly, eyes scanning the crowd, and finds Steve sitting patiently near the back with his brother and the rest of the boys. After a moment's time, he catches the older boys gaze—the aching whiskey hangover, compounded by the stifling heat have made him disinterested in the pending convocation—and instead, he eyes Steve with muted apathy. He’s not sure if he knows about the breakup yet—he hasn’t said anything to him beyond his usual wise-cracking comments—and a part of him resents him for it. He watches him lean into the girl next to him—Robin, he thinks her name is—and Jonathan isn’t sure if its the hangover or the reeling emotional paralysis of being such a_ piece of shit_, but his mind feels slow like the flat curve of a river, smooth and sparkling and sluggish. It takes him more than a moment to realize that Steve is in fact pointing at him—no wait, not him, _the stage_—and Jonathan snaps his head back: the principal is calling his name.

With unsteady feet, he finds himself walking towards the stairs of the tiny stage they’d set up in the gymnasium. He tries to focus on something that isn’t his own inundated sense of nausea and ignores the prickling of his skin underneath the weighty robes in the balmy June heat. As he approaches their principal, he finds himself staring out into the crowd again. He momentarily finds Nancy’s encouraging smile near the back of the graduates and he recoils, gaze drawn firmly back to where his his family sits. His mother smiles proudly and Will looks like he's stifling a yawn. Then, Steve looks at him for all of two seconds, his gaze furtive and confused before he leans back into Robin again, his mouth moving at a rapid pace. They're talking about something, Jonathan realizes. Something that involves him. With Steve's gaze abandoning him, Jonathan looks away.

When he accepts his diploma, he says a murmured: “Thanks". His voice is a little too deep, a little too slow, and he exchanges the empty space in his hand for a meaningless piece of paper certifying that he’s officially graduated from Hawkins High. He's given accolades from their principal for his acceptance into NYU, but he hasn't the heart to correct the woman and break the news that he may not be attending due to his financial situation. He thinks he might have smiled at her though, and watches as the older woman flushes pink and return the smile back with uncertainty. And if she could smell the stale alcohol on Jonathan’s breath, she doesn’t say a word.

When he makes his exit stage left, he turns again to look for his mother, only instead finds Steve staring at him again, eyes as hard as the day all those years ago when he confronted him in the alleyway with Nancy. Jonathan, for the life of him, can't figure out why. He exhales deeply and feels his skin prickle: he feels like he's going to be sick. He avoids the cameras taking pictures, pushing through the black-robed crowd of recent graduates and disappears into the empty school halls.

\---

The after party is at Sammy Clearwater’s house. Jonathan didn’t want to go, but Steve showed up at his house later in the day with Nancy and Robin perched in the backseat of his car like perfect, glimmering BMW accessories. His protests go ignored: Steve refuses to let Jonathan miss his own graduation party, and_ besides_, the older boy had wheedled, it’ll be _fun._

He doesn't ask about Steve's strange glares from during the graduation ceremony and Steve doesn't expound. Rather, Steve fills in the silent car ride with talks about the party and the booze in his trunk and Nancy winning that entrance scholarship to Penn State. Steve definitely didn’t know about the breakup (and if he did, he was talking an _awful_ lot to compensate for it) and Jonathan could almost strangle him. Between Steve’s babbling, Robin’s dry rebuttals, Nancy's noticeable silence and the bad music, Jonathan almost feels _relief_ once the car stops and Robin sardonically proclaims it’s time to descend upon party central. Yes, it was definitely relief, because if Jonathan had to listen to one more song by _Journey_, he had been about 3 seconds away from throwing himself from the moving vehicle.

The party itself is all very teenage-esque, brought together by something that only absentee parents of a rich kid could assure. Upon arriving, Steve shines and smiles in that effortless way that he always does—he is seemingly unphased by the fact that he’s too old to be here, too _different _(he’s not King Steve anymore,—he's just...Steve. Indescribably overconfident, a touch overprotective, and surprisingly nerdy when you got him onto the right subject) and he wraps an arm around Robin, pulling the girl towards the punch bowl.

“Lighten up, Rob’,” he hears Steve drawl, and from the look on Robin’s face, Jonathan knows that at least _she _understands that they shouldn’t be crashing a high schoolers graduation party. The two disappear into the crowd, roaming in search of something to drink.

Which leaves him alone with Nancy, and expectantly, Jonathan feels his stomach tighten.

“This is...nice,” Nancy says, but her eyes won’t meet his. Jonathan’s eyes flit to where Nancy is looking and sees all their classmates dressed to the nines in their formal wear while carrying cheap beer and box-wine in their hands. He’s not sure if she’s talking about them, or...well, there was no ‘us’ anymore. And Jonathan doesn’t want to pry.

Jonathan hums a simple “_mhmm_,” and reaches for the nearest beer. He cracks it open with the hem of his dress shirt, finding it to be lukewarm and flat. It doesn’t matter—he drinks it all down in one go and watches as Nancy fidgets on the spot. He supposes he should try and make small talk. They had promised each other that they'd still remain friends, right? He could ask her how she’s been doing—‘_Hey Nancy’, how’s the breakup treating you?’ ‘Oh, and me? I'm completely miserable’_—but he can’t bring himself to do it. She hasn’t mentioned the break up all day; in fact, nobody has. And if anything, Nancy seems unaffected, smiling easily when some girl from her AP math class greets her, dissolving quickly into warm chatter.

Jonathan, however, feels sick. Washed out. Alone.

He searches for the closest tub of iced beer and grabs for another when she isn’t looking. It goes down easy, wetting his parched lips like some miraculous cure-all for awkwardness, and when he pulls back, he notices Nancy’s friend is gone and that she is again staring at him, eyes characteristically wide with concern.

“_Jonathan_—,” she tries.

Jonathan sighs and tries not to let her tone of voice bother him. That same tone she used whenever she _knew _something was wrong with him. When she’d pry and prod in that soft sort of way, unrelentingly, and always trying to get him to open up to her more—to get whatever it was that was bothering him off his chest.

“I’m fine, Nancy,” he dismisses her, taking another swig of his drink. His issues weren't her issues anymore. This wasn't something she could fix. “Let’s...let’s not do this here.” To his own ears, he sounds tired. Bitter, even. Undone. And he knows very intimately that he's made a mistake, because nobody dismisses Nancy Wheeler. Not even Jonathan. He watches uneasily as Nancy’s face hardens like graphite under pressure, producing the most beautiful display of hidden contempt that he has ever seen, and his stomach drops as her lips grow thin.

She takes a step forward and lowers her voice incrementally.

“_You _broke up with_ me_,” she hisses dangerously—and there it is, that delayed reaction from three days past; she’s fed up with his pity party and ready to fight—and Jonathan can only nod, agreeing with her, and drifting aimlessly within his own thoughts, waiting patiently for the emotional conflagration to blow over. “So don’t act like this is somehow _my_ fault,” she adds.

Around him, the party goers crowd is swelling in size, the bodies becoming more and more frenetic, more and more tightly packed. Jonathan takes another sip of his drink, and his stomach pulls. The beer in his throat tastes like poison, and Nancy is looking at him, waiting, quietly furious, quietly expecting, and Jonathan excuses himself wordlessly. He can’t do this. He was a fool to think that he could, and even if Nancy’s right, it doesn’t stop him pulling back and deflecting any emotional culpability that he chooses not to face in front of her.

\---

The walk home from the party is a sloppy mess of misplaced footsteps, coupled with the painful awareness that he is far too drunk and not in the fun way. When he tries to escape unnoticed, tired and anxious from avoiding Nancy for the better half of three hours, Steve appears by his side and asks if he’d like his company for the walk home. He wasn’t sure why he said “yes”—he and Steve were friends now, but between them there was always that lingering reminder of the unspoken: Nancy. They rarely hung out alone, and if they did it was always doing something in silence, like watching a movie. Doing so left less room for error—less chances for them to misspeak and inadvertently rekindle their mutual dislike for one another. But right now, that didn't matter. With the unsteady nod of his head, he and Steve had set off down the road together, Steve declaring loudly that Robin had ditched him because she was, "like, lame and super responsible." When Jonathan asks what he means by this, Steve sheepishly admits that she works in the morning at the video store—in fact, she had taken _his_ shift after he had begged her to, and Jonathan can't help but to laugh.

"You're a bad friend," he tells him. 

Steve raises his eye brow high and shoots him a pointed look.

"I'm walking your drunk ass home, aren't I, Byers?" 

Jonathan rolls his eyes, shrugging in agreement (he hates that Steve is right) and Steve flashes him a smile in return, grabbing hold of his shoulder to steady him in a silent reminder that he had once again, had far too much to drink.

In between careful footsteps, Jonathan notices that the warm summer nights smells of fresh cut grass and the dust from the dry ditches. Surprisingly however, it's the pleasant scent of Steve—of expensive cologne and old cigarette smoke—that holds his attention and allows him to focus on taking steady, even steps as they slowly make their way towards the suburbs. Then, Jonathan trips and Steve is laughing, pulling him upright before he tumbles into the roadside brush.

“It was fun party though, right Byers?” Steve asks, and Jonathan is vaguely aware that Steve’s words are slow and slightly slurred, and he may not be as sober as Jonathan initially thought he was. Which is why perhaps, Jonathan thinks absently, that they were walking instead of taking Steve’s car.

Jonathan hums a non committal “uh huh”, too tired to disagree with him, and Steve laughs again, his cheeks flushing bright and red from the alcohol. Jonathan hums and tries to think about how much _he_ drank tonight (and wonders absently if his cheeks are just as flushed as Steve's) and how he only did it to forget that Nancy was a constant shadow, darkening his peripheries at every turn of his head. He realizes he doesn't really know, and instead tries to focus on not stumbling over his feet again. They were sore from too much standing and aching from the uncomfortable tightness of his ill fitting shoes. For a while, the pair say nothing and they make good time, travelling a good two or three blocks in a matter of ten minutes. Neither of them acknowledge that Jonathan’s house is _at least_ another 45 minutes away on foot, nestled quietly in the backwoods on the edge of town.

The silence however, does not last.

“So you and Nancy, huh?” Steve says suddenly out of nowhere. He doesn't come out and directly say it, but the acknowledgement of their break-up is _there,_ just in the tone of his voice. Jonathan stiffens and he can feel the warmth of his embarrassment join his already flushed face. He swallows thickly, and tries to think. How long had Steve known? Just since tonight? Or was it at graduation? Had Nancy told him? And if so, what had she said? Then, words are tumbling out of his drunken mouth, slipping fluidly through his teeth and pouring off the tip of his tongue.

“I’m gay.” His tone is admittedly acerbic and he realizes the moment the words are spoken that he was doing himself no good.

Momentarily, Steve stills. Jonathan, however, does not, and keeps walking. The words he had just uttered were already burning a hole in his chest, reverberating endlessly and always, over and over again in the back of his mind. God, this was all so _stupid._ Everything about it was stupid. Telling _Steve Harrington_ was stupid. He stops and turns, half wobbly and shameful and looks to Steve, who is still motionless and silent. Lost in thought, Jonathan thinks; the same way Nancy had been. As if somehow this revelation was unbelievable and _wrong. _Jonathan Byers could not be queer. Jonathan Byers was a weirdo—a freak, even—but he wasn’t actually gay. Jonathan Byers dated Nancy Wheeler and worked two part-time jobs and loved photography—but he wasn’t gay. It just wasn't part of the equation. 

The thought of it all is almost enough to make Jonathan laugh.

Then, Steve meets his gaze: he doesn’t look disgusted in the way Jonathan had expected him to be. Just confused. Dazed, maybe. As if he was still struggling to put together the pieces in his head, and Jonathan just lets out a loud sigh, and turns to go.

“Hey, _wait!_—,” Steve calls after him, but Jonathan doesn’t look back. Steve’s footsteps could be heard following him in a steady, heavy jog, and when he finally catches up to him, he reaches out and grabs hold of his shoulder, pulling him around.

“Nancy never told me,” he tells him quietly, as if this is supposed to mean something. “About...you know. Being gay. Only that you had dumped her.” Again, Jonathan almost wants to laugh. But _of course_ Nancy wouldn’t. She was too kind. Too damn nice for her own good. It doesn't matter: Jonathan pretends that he doesn’t hear him and tries to keep his blurry eyes focused on the fluidly escaping sidewalk instead. A part of him just wishes that the ground would open up beneath him and swallow him up whole.

When Steve realizes Jonathan doesn’t want to talk about it—unlike Nancy, Steve is kind enough to leave well enough alone—he just nods. 

Then, he's wrapping an arm around him, leading them onward as they had done before and he doesn’t say anything else. Not a damn word. And Jonathan is secretly glad—he’s glad Steve has nothing else to say for once in his life—and is even more grateful that he’s somehow accepted this, no questions asked.

The rest of the walk is filled by silence and Steve’s occasional humming—Jonathan realizes its _Journey _again—but he’s too damn tired to make a comment about it. It’s only when they’re halfway down Steve’s driveway that leads up to his looming, empty house does Jonathan realize that they’ve taken a detour. They’re not going to his home; in fact, they’re not anywhere _near_ the Byers residence.

“Steve,” Jonathan murmurs quietly, still not stopping. “This isn’t my house.”

Steve chuckles, untangling his arm from Jonathan’s shoulder and he slips up the steps.

“You’re drunk, _I’m_ drunk, and we’re both tired, Johnny-boy,” Steve tells him flippantly. He pulls a set of keys out of his pocket and slips them into the doorknob with a jarring rattle. He pulls at it a few times and the door swings opens with a satisfying creak_. _“Besides, your house is like...a million miles away,” Steve reasons. He sounds slightly sluggish now, his voice noticeably less clear and the words soft. “Just be grateful that I’m not letting you sleep in a ditch.”

“‘I can’t stay…” Jonathan murmurs in protest. “...'Mom will wonder where I am.” But he knows Steve is right—his house is too far, and his feet hurt, and _god_, is he tired. Protests aside, he doesn’t resist and is led inside by Steve, who nearly trips over what appears to be a set of discarded clunky heels by the doormat. Steve swears, and in the inky darkness, Jonathan can barely make him out fumbling with a light switch near the stairs. Seconds later, they are both flooded by the warm glow of crystalline light from the overhanging chandelier. A few unending seconds of silence pass. Jonathan looks to Steve, sweaty and out of breath from the walk home, and then to his hair, uncharacteristically flat against his forehead. He looks disheveled, Jonathan thinks. And out of sorts. Uncharacteristically _human. _Nothing like the usual Steve, who always appears as though he’s stepped straight out of a magazine. It’s then, in those quiet moments of contemplation, that Steve begins to laugh.

Instantly, Jonathan’s lips melt into a frown, and he eyes Steve skeptically, letting out an irritated, “_What_?”

“You’re _hammered_,” Steve tells him through a sloppy smile. Jonathan’s frown deepens. He ends up looking down at himself—at his untucked dress shirt and scuffed, dirty shoes, to the stain on the hem of his pant leg where someone had spilled a dark drink.Then, he looks back to Steve, who is equally messy, with ruddy cheeks and sweaty, flattened hair from the long walk home.

“You are too,” Jonathan points out, his lips twitching ever so slightly up into a half-smile. Steve, like always, just grins, laughing harder and louder than he's ever heard before, nearly tripping over himself as heads towards the staircase.

“C’mon Byers,” Steve says, skipping up the first two steps. “Let’s get you out of that monkey-suit.”

\---

Jonathan’s not sure how long Steve has been in the shower for when he lays down onto his bed, eyes fluttering shut. The older boy had thrown him a pair of sweatpants and an errant t-shirt with a distasteful sports team logo on it that he had pulled from his closet before excusing himself to the bathroom. Was that fifteen minutes ago? Twenty? Jonathan didn’t really know, but what he did know was that he was tired and needed to lay down. He fumbles with the sheets and slips under the duvet cover, mindful that he too could really use a shower as well. Mentally he promises himself that he’ll throw Steve’s bedding in the wash before he leaves in the morning.

The minutes tick by and Jonathan listens for the sound of the shower across the hall—it’s still running—and Jonathan gives in completely, closing his eyes. If Steve had wanted him to sleep elsewhere, he should have shown him where the couch was before disappearing for so long. Steve’s bed, as it were, was now his.

In the comfort of the cottony duvet, his mind drifts. To the party, to his graduation...to the park near Melvald's three days past. There was a reason why he had kept being queer a secret; a reason why he tried to make things work for _months_ with Nancy, even though deep down he knew that this wasn’t some strange mistake, not some passing loss of affection. He hadn’t wanted it to be true, but he felt all the worse because he was okay with it. It was simply the expectations of others that bothered him. He hadn’t meant to hurt Nancy. He hadn’t meant to disappoint her. What he really wanted was—

His thoughts are cut short, the door to the room creaking open and the handle breaking the silence with an audible _click. _He blinks, opening his eyes ever so slightly, and catches sight of an indistinct shadow slipping through the darkness of the room, made only recognizable by the messiness of his damp hair, his silhouette illuminated by the dull green fluorescence of the digital clock face on the desk. Then, the door shuts again, and Jonathan watches mutely as the shadow glides towards the bed. Steve is fluid and quick, only hesitating once he reaches the bedside, as if made suddenly aware of the fact that there was another body in it. He briefly wonders if Steve had forgotten about him. Then, the floorboards creak and Jonathan thinks Steve is about to leave—one step forward, one step back, then forward again—and finally, the feet make a decision, slipping into the free side of the bed, the mattress sagging to the left from the added weight.

“Jonathan?” Steve’s voice asks softly in the darkness. “You awake?” Steve’s voice is thick with sleep, deep and almost unsettlingly attractive, and Jonathan shifts again, ever so slightly, turning to face the other boy. He smells clean and sharp, and Jonathan is suddenly painfully aware of how awful he must smell—like the party, and beer, and understandably like smoke from the cigarettes Steve had smoked on the way home.

“Yeah...I’m awake,” he murmurs, and Steve pulls himself further under the duvet. Steve doesn’t say anything then, and Jonathan can feel him pulling the sheets closer, tighter, his body shifting left and then right, as though he can’t quite settle in. Then, he stills and Jonathan opens his eyes; Steve is curled on his side, head pressed firmly into the pillow, his one arm stretched out and nearly touching Jonathan’s side.

“‘Sorry,” Steve murmurs. “Used to sleeping alone. You’re on my side of the bed,” and Jonathan can’t help but to let out a quiet snicker—a small hiss, really—and Steve swats at him, missing, and hits the empty space of the mattress between them instead.

“I could sleep on the floor,” Jonathan suggests tentatively—this was weird, he suddenly thinks, all of this is weird—and Steve shifts again, curling up closer and letting out a sleepy sigh.

“Nah, this is fine,” Steve says in the darkness. “I promise you I don’t bite.”

Jonathan hums in acceptance, closing his eyes again. He’s tired. Drunk and tired. And vibrating with the lucid awareness that he’s sleeping in a bed next to Steve Harrington. But then again, stranger things had happened.

Then, after a moment, Steve speaks again. He’s quieter this time, his voice laced with an undue softness.

“You know Byers, I was thinking while I was in the shower..."

"Must have hard for you," Jonathan murmurs teasingly. "That was a long shower." 

Steve swats at him again, this time landing a hit on his abdomen and Jonathan lets out a muffled _oomfph. _

"People grow in all directions," Steve states, undeterred. "All the time."

And Jonathan isn’t really sure what Steve is talking about, or if he's just really drunk, or if he’s even really talking to him at all. He suspects it may be a combination of the last two options. But Jonathan listens anyways, breath hitched and eyes blinking curiously, trying in vain to catch a glimpse of what Steve’s face may look like right now—as if his facial expressions could somehow reveal more to what he was saying. Predictably, he can’t see a damn thing.

“People have these rigid expectations of you,” Steve mumbles. “Of what you’re supposed to be, or how you’re supposed to turn out. Going to college. Getting a scholarship,”—Jonathan is _sure _that he’s talking to himself now—”Dating Nancy Wheeler,” Steve adds, softer than before, and Jonathan feels his chest grow tight. He’s listening, _really listening_, and Steve lets out a breathy sigh.

“But if they never really adjusted those expectations when it was clear that they didn’t fit you…”

Steve, Jonathan thinks, sounds incredibly exhausted, paper thin and wet, and he doesn't know what to make of it.

“It’s not your fault then if those people weren’t prepared to grow with you." Steve's voice is slow and soft, like the first warm embrace of a summer breeze following a particularly cold winter. “And for those who don’t...well, fuck ‘em.”

Then, he feels it. Fingers, quiet and hesitant, pressing gently against his own. They linger only for a moment—

And then, they’re gone.

“Steve?” Jonathan whispers, but Steve doesn’t respond. His heart is beating wildly again and his chest tightens, his stomach twisting uncomfortably with the vague awareness that Steve is—, well, Steve is…

Even in the dark, Jonathan can see that like Nancy, Steve is spotless. Like his room with the clean floors and his uncluttered dresser; like his hair that always looks like something out of a magazine, Steve, as a person, is picture perfect.

And it hurts. It really fucking hurts, because like Nancy, Jonathan knows that he’ll never be able to love him in the way that he needs to, or can.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't listened to "Jessie's Girl" by Rick Springfield, I'd recommend go checking it out to get an idea of Steve's bad, off-key humming.

He wakes up to Steve humming.

He is humming and tapping his fingers on the crook of his knee, perched crossed-legged on the end of the bed. Watching, and waiting. Jonathan can’t quite make out _what_ Steve is humming exactly, but it sounds vaguely familiar, like the chorus of a Rick Springfield song. Jonathan elicits a small groan.

The noise is enough for Steve and the humming abruptly stops.

“_Finally_,” the other boy drawls, and Jonathan can hear the smug enthusiasm in his voice. The mattress shifts with the creaking of the box spring as Steve crawls up the length of the bed and settles himself next to him. “I was running out of songs to sing,” he chuckles.

Jonathan blinks, once, then twice, and feels the contained nausea of his stomach rise towards his head. It rolls across him like a strong wave, pooling in the back of his throat, and instinctively he feels as though he just might throw up.

“Why were you singing?” Jonathan manages to croak out. With some effort, he rolls over on his side to meet Steve's gaze and pushes himself upward on the bend of his elbow. He blinks again, bleary eyed and tired. He feels sick, he thinks, but not in the same anxious way he had felt last night. This particular brand of sickness was something that could only be obtained through the collective empty bottoms of too many cheap beers and sugary box wines. A number that which he was still a bit fuzzy on. Distractedly, he licks his lips only to find his mouth is akin to the stuffing of fuzzy cotton balls and lets out another tiny groan.

“So I could get sleeping beauty’s ass outta bed,” Steve smirks.

Jonathan almost wants to hit him, _almost,_ but Steve seems to have predicted Jonathan’s sorry state, and in kindness he reaches out behind him to the night stand. He then hands Jonathan a glass of water and nods his head as if to silently say: _drink it._

Jonathan takes a small sip of the water and then carelessly throws all caution to the wind, gulping it all down. His dry mouth momentarily feels relief, but the feeling is quickly hampered by the sudden pang of nausea that blooms up from his stomach. Then, as quickly as it had unfolded, the nausea subsides and Jonathan swallows thickly. It could be worse, he tells himself. It could be a whiskey hangover. He could be sweating out the remains of a 26oz bottle of Jim Beam in his graduation robes in 91 °F weather. All things considered, Steve’s room isn’t that bad of a place to struggle through a hangover in. And if he’s being honest, he’s surprised that he isn’t in worse shape right now considering that he can’t even remember how many beers he had downed last night.

What’s more surprising however, is Steve himself: the asshole is fully dressed and beaming, not a single sign of a lingering hangover present _anywhere_ across the entirety of his being or his stupidly smiling face. In fact, he looks even better than usual. Even _with_ his hair, which Jonathan notes is messier than it normally is from sleeping on it while wet. And unsurprisingly enough, Jonathan instantly resents him for it.

Jonathan’s scowls asides, Steve takes the glass back from his hand and sets it back down on the nightstand. He then pokes at his shoulder for good measure. “You missed my _amazing_ rendition of Benatar’s _Love is a Battlefield,”_ he adds.

Jonathan rolls his eyes.

“I’m crushed,” he says flatly and with that, he falls flat back onto the mattress. He rolls over again and pulls the duvet cover up high, curling into the pillow. If he couldn’t see Steve, then maybe, _just maybe_, Steve wouldn’t be able to see him and he would leave him alone.

His plan doesn’t work. And Steve, as if he could sense Jonathan’s mounting annoyance with him (for waking him up so early, for showing no signs of a hangover, for _daring_ to sing Rick Springfield out of all people to him), let’s out another loud, off-key hum, grinning widely. Jonathan groans, squeezing his eyes shut. He briefly hopes that when he opens them again that Steve will be gone. He knows that he’s in his bed. He knows that this is Steve’s house. And despite knowing he should just excuse himself politely and begin the long walk home of shame, what he wants more than anything else right now is to just sleep. A childish part of him also hopes that when he opens his eyes again, he’d find himself in his own bed, in his own home. That he’d find that he _hadn’t_ just spent the night at Steve’s, in Steve’s bed, and was now _not_ laying next to him, with Steve humming a loud, incredibly off-key rendition of _Jessie’s Girl_. If he hadn’t been so hungover, he might have felt embarrassed. Instead, he just feels groggy and sluggish, and can only think of one thing: it was way too early for any of this.

Pedantically, he pulls the sheets even higher over his head and ignores him.

“_Hey_—,” Steve rips the bedding back, bundling it into a ball and tossing it to the floor. Jonathan reflexively curls up into the fetal position—it was cold, and the sun was too bright, and Steve was being too damn cheerful for someone who probably drank their own weight in beer the night before. “Get up, Byers. I’m hungry.”

Jonathan blinks again, trying to make sense of what Steve has just said. When he can't, he lets out a breathy groan and squeezes his eyes shut even tighter.

“This is _your_ house,” he finally mumbles, pressing his head deeper into the pillow. “Don’t you have a kitchen or something downstairs? A fridge?” He knows he’s being grumpy. Childish, almost. But he’s too damn tired and too hungover to care.

Steve pauses as if to consider this—as if for a brief moment he’s remembering that: _ah, right, I _do_ have a fridge full of food!_—but then he shakes his head and launches himself off the side of the bed. The sudden movement causes the mattress to abruptly shift, and Jonathan, already curled up dangerously near the edge, almost finds himself falling flat on his ass to the floor.

“_Steve!_” he snaps, but it comes out more like a soft, pathetic sounding whine. He rolls over again, spreading out like a starfish and finds himself staring up at the popcorn ceiling instead. Steve looms in the edge of his peripheries like a grinning ghost, busying himself in his closet. Jonathan frowns. His head is pounding and he needs more water. His mouth is dry again and this time it feels like the Sahara, sandpaper dry and gritty.

“Nah—,” Steve walks towards his desk and picks up something hanging off the chair—a towel—and throws it at Jonathan. It lands near his feet, half hanging from the side of the bed. “I want Benny’s greasy breakfast special down at the diner. So, go shower Byers: you stink.”

Jonathan considers arguing with him. They don’t have a car. Jonathan has no clean clothes. It’s seven-fucking-thirty in the morning. He opts for the petty route instead:

“Only because you took a 30-minute shower last night. You’re worse than a girl, Harrington: Nancy takes quicker showers than you do.”

The comment doesn’t have it’s intended effect and Steve simply smirks.

“You don’t get hair like this without a beauty routine, Byers,” he says while running a hand through it. “You should try it sometime.”

Jonathan growls but sits up regardless. He doesn’t mention to Steve that today his hair is very pointedly less than perfect: it’s floppy almost, more natural. Noticeably product free. He almost wants to tell him it looks better this way, but can’t bring himself to do so knowing that it’ll only serve to inflate Steve’s already oversized ego.

“Showers at the end of the hall to the right,” Steve tells him flippantly. “And there’s a pair of sweatpants and a shirt folded on my desk. Meet me downstairs in 10 minutes?”

Jonathan’s lost. He knows he has. He can’t win the fight against the overpowering force of sheer enthusiasm that is Steve Harrington. There’s no arguing with him. Instead, he simply nods, crawling off the bed with stiff limbs and sore feet. Absently, he notices his one heel has a red, welting blister. Steve, spurious and glib in his actions, is kind enough to exit the room, but not before animatedly mouthing “ten minutes, Byers!” while pointing to the invisible watch on his wrist.

\---

The breakfast at the diner is a welcomed relief to his achingly sore stomach. The eggs are just the right amount of greasy and the bacon crisp. Even the hash browns, which Jonathan normally tends to avoids, have the perfect amount of salt, the perfect amount of chew, and he doesn’t even complain when Steve doggedly insists that he orders brown bread for his toast instead of his usual white. It’s the perfect hangover cure, and although Steve doesn’t say anything, the smug smile streaking across his lips tells Jonathan everything he needs to know.

_Of course _Steve would know that Benny’s breakfast special would save them. He had been, for the better part of 3 years, ‘King Steve’: champion of crushing beers and killing kegs. Quietly, Jonathan is grateful for it.

The real challenge had been getting there. By the time they had reached the diner, Jonathan had been almost awake enough to feel hungry, but also painfully aware of his expounding headache. Steve had thrown him a bottle of ibuprofen before they left the house that morning and begrudgingly, they had walked back to Sammy Clearwater’s to find the front lawn of the other boy's home littered with empty plastic cups and broken beer bottles. A few other abandoned cars lingered on the empty boulevard, and they found Steve’s BMW untouched up the road near the intersection. After listening to Steve excitedly remark about how Sammy was "_so_ dead" once his parents got home, Steve had been kind enough to let them ride to the diner in silence (or maybe he was just as hungover as Jonathan was, but was better at hiding it).

“Feeling better?” Steve dares to ask. He had ordered the same breakfast special Jonathan had, but his plate was noticeably untouched. Steve, Jonathan notes, seemed to pick at his food like a bird, and was more interested in watching the other customers of the diner than actually eating his own food. Every once in a while, he would take a bite of the crunchy bacon, or slice through a section of his sunny-side up egg, but he ate it all in leisure, pointedly engrossed in what the old woman across the way was doing, or as of right now, how Jonathan was.

“A bit,” Jonathan admits, and Steve smiles kindly.

“There were a few moments where I thought I was gonna lose you this morning,” Steve then says, his smile turning wicked.

Jonathan, mid sip of coffee, blinks and swallows thickly.

“Huh?”

“You were in your death throes,” Steve teases. “I couldn’t sleep because of all your moaning.”

Instantly, Jonathan flushes and finds himself choking on his drink. Smooth. Steve doesn’t seem to care and laughs heedlessly, ignoring Jonathan’s glares as he wipes the dribble of coffee from his chin with a napkin.

“Steve? _Jonathan?_”

The voice is familiar, achingly so.

Jonathan swivels in his seat, napkin still pressed to his chin and finds himself staring at Nancy Wheeler. With her near the door is her family, who were collectively being ushered towards a larger table across the diner near the back.

Instantly, Jonathan feels his chest tighten and he blinks.

“Nance’!” Steve smiles back at her like it’s easy. Like nothing about this situation was weird. He waves her over with a graceful casualness and the tightness in Jonathan's chest swells. Steve makes it seem so...simple. And Jonathan wonders if he'll ever get to a point in his relationship with Nancy where it's like this. Normal. Casual. Their past relationship and subsequent new awkwardness forgotten.

Uneasily, Jonathan watches as Nancy momentarily fidgets, like she’s debating internally on whether or not to actually approach the table. _But_, Jonathan notes, she’s Nancy Wheeler, and Nancy never backs down. It only takes 5 seconds and three long purposefully strides for her to reach them, and when she does, Jonathan sees that she’s nervous—she’s doing that thing with her hair, the thing where she tucks it in repeatedly behind her right ear. There's a moment (a split second really) where he wants to reach out grab her hand and it squeeze it in a silent show of support—but the gut instinct is immediately squashed when he remembers that _oh wait, right_: we’re not together anymore.

“Hey, Nancy,” Jonathan manages, noticeably quieter than Steve.

Nancy nods to both of them, still nervous looking. She shifts her weight from one foot to the next, bared teeth pulling anxiously at her painted pink lips.

As always, Steve swoops in to save the day.

“Sorry about last night,” Steve chuckles lightly. He leans back into the booth, taking a long sip of his milky coffee. “I’m a pretty bad DD, aren’t I?”

It seems to be the right thing to say, and Nancy’s expression softens and she stops fiddling with her hair.

“Uh, _yeah _Steve.” But the words come out tenderly and with a smile. Much like a mother would say for scolding their child for destroying the kitchen in an attempt to make breakfast. As if she wasn’t truly ever even mad with him to begin with, and almost knew to expect as much, seeing as how it was Steve. Steve Harrington. Then, expectantly, her eyes swing towards Jonathan and the softness fades. Instead, she looks confused, her expression melting into poorly hidden disbelief. She eyes him up and down, down and up, from his feet to his damp hair, her brows quickly furrowing into tightly knitted lines.

Jonathan realizes very quickly, very astutely, that it’s because of his clothing. Or rather, more specifically _Steve’s _clothing. They are very noticeably not his own—the grey cotton sweatpants and golden v-cut tee-shirt with the navy-blue _Indiana Pacers_ logo were very clearly _not_ his. Jonathan voluntarily sporting sweatpants and a basketball team tee? _Hah._ In reality, it had been the best Steve could find for him on such short notice: the other boy was a good 2 inches taller than him and so most of his pants didn’t quite fit the smaller Jonathan. The t-shirt was simply one of the many random, errant articles of clothing that Steve had neatly lining his closet, but it was decidedly something that Jonathan would never wear on his own. Regardless, he had been silently thankful that the other offered alternative from Steve's wardrobe hadn't been presented: a crew-cut polo.

But Nancy…well, Nancy doesn’t seem to understand. The look in her eyes tells him so. She knows the clothing Jonathan is wearing isn’t his own. That something about it is _wrong. _In fact, she may even know that the clothing is Steve’s. But what she doesn’t know is _why._

In face of her silent scrutiny, Jonathan feels himself grow hot and he flattens himself against the back of the booth, as if to will himself invisible. He then turns his attention to his breakfast. Nancy opens her mouth as if she wants to say something, but then seemingly decides against it, promptly closing it. Then, her lips part again and Jonathan stabs at his hash browns like they had just insulted his mother.

Steve, like always, is oblivious, munching quietly on his toast before latently realizing the muted standoff happening at the table. Even then, it takes him a few more seconds of staring, eyes flickering back and forth between the pair to dissect what is happening.

Then, Steve is chuckling, letting out a drawn out: “_Ah_”.

“Jonathan stayed at my house last night, Nance’,” he supplies helpfully. “And since he had nothing else to wear other than his monkey-suit this morning, I gave him some of my clothes.”

The answer Steve provides doesn’t seem to sit well with Nancy at first. Jonathan watches as she momentarily fidgets, as if somehow what Steve had told her just didn’t quite make sense. As if she was missing something. A key piece to any otherwise uncomplicated equation. Eventually, her skepticism fades and she settles on a quiet:

“It’s… nice.” Her voice sounds thin, Jonathan thinks. And strained. Just like last night. But he says nothing, and pierces another piece of hash brown with his fork. “That you two are hanging out more, that is,” she adds.

Steve simply beams at her, taking another sip of his coffee and doesn’t seem to notice the thin way Nancy’s lips twist into a bitter-half smile. The way her voice seeps with reluctance, as if there were a million little other things she wants to say, but simply can’t. Jonathan instantly recognizes it as anger, carefully subdued and hidden by her tempered patience (and perhaps softness) for Steve. Then, her head twists to the left—Jonathan follows her gaze and finds that she’s looking at her family, settled near the back in a large booth by the kitchen. The waitress is there, handing out menus and filling cups with coffee.

“I should get back,” Nancy then announces, eyes lingering on the table. The cloying thinness in her voice is gone, and so is the resentment. She’s snapped out of it, Jonathan thinks, readying for another fake performance with her family. “I don’t want my mom ordering for me,” she says distastefully, her tongue sticking out. Jonathan slowly nods and Steve smiles.

“Later, Nancy,” he says and Jonathan mumbles the same. Then, she excuses herself, and the boys are left alone again.

They return to their habitual patterns: Steve taking flighty bites of his food, more preoccupied with people watching, and Jonathan—well, Jonathan watching Steve. He finds himself deflating, slouching back into his seat as Steve goes back to sipping on his coffee, taking the occasional bite of toast that he’s piled high with messy egg and pieces of bacon. He seems unphased by Nancy or her decidedly quiet judgements and Jonathan lets out a long, breathy sigh.

How could Steve be so _dense?_

“You know she’s mad, right?”

Steve hums in response, fiddling with another sugar packet and adding it to his already overly sweetened coffee.

“Who, Nancy?”

Jonathan nods, eyes drawn to the table as he plays idly with his fork.

In response, Steve just chuckles.

“What? Why? Because I’m taking you to breakfast and you’re wearing my sweatpants?”

Jonathan shrinks further into his seat, squirming. When Steve says it like that, it seems...wrong, almost. Ridiculous at best. Him saying it out loud makes Jonathan feel weirder than he had originally anticipated and he looks away, unable to meet Steve’s gazes.

“Because we’re hanging out,” Jonathan murmurs, finger still toying with the cool metallic edge of his utensil.

Again, Steve doesn’t seem to understand what Jonathan is implying, or if he does, he’s doing an incredibly good job at playing dumb. He shrugs, nonplussed and says: “We’ve hung out before, Byers. What’s the big deal?”

Jonathan rolls his eyes. He can’t help it; he really can’t.

“Like...twice. Three times, maybe.”

Again, Steve just shrugs, but appears to take a moment to contemplate what Jonathan has just told him. His finger runs across the rim of his coffee cup, sticky and wet from too much milk and sugar, and for a moment, his mouth opens ever so slightly. He looks like he’s about to argue the fact, but then his mouth slips shut: it’s true, he’s realized, but he doesn’t seem too bothered by this revelation.

“She’s the one who was always pestering us to get along,” Steve finally decides upon. “So what? Now because neither of us are dating her, we can’t hang out?”

Jonathan blinks dully and lets out another long, drawn out sigh.

“...that’s the entire point, Steve.” He doesn’t want to have to straight up spell it out for him: that neither of them listened to her—to Nancy—while they were dating her. That neither of them had really cared enough to try and get along with one another beyond that familiar acquiesced politeness, despite Nancy’s insistent prodding. How many times was it that Nancy had quietly told him that both he and Steve were important to her? And how many times had she told Steve that in return? Three? Four? Ten times? “We aren’t dating her,” he adds. “And when we were…”

Steve’s eyes seem to brighten with the sudden awareness of what Jonathan was getting at, his mouth slipping into a loose ‘o’ shape as he mouths a silent “_ah_”. Then, Steve presses his coffee mug down onto the table and he slouches back into the booth, slinging his arm over the empty backside. For a moment, he seems lost in thought, and in a very quiet way, puzzled.

Jonathan shrugs and returns to his breakfast. It’s cold now, the remnants of his egg solidified into a thick, stodgy mess and the toast slightly damp and soggy from the butter.

“You still like her, don’t you?”

Steve tells him this as he’s mid bite of toast. It’s spoken very casually, very calmly, and despite it being poised as a question, Jonathan knows that it’s not. It’s a statement of fact, and when he looks up to meet Steve’s gaze, the other is smiling, but not unkindly. Jonathan isn’t sure what to make of it, and he quickly swallows down the soggy lump of toast in his mouth, unable to keep eye contact. What bothers him more is the reminder of the lingering rawness of his drunken confession to Steve on their walk home last night. Inferring that he likes Nancy like that is..._well._..well, it hurts.

“I told you last night, Harrington,” Jonathan mutters hotly. “That I’m—"

Steve cuts him off with the wave of a hand.

“We were drunk, Byers, but not blackout drunk: I remember.” Steve takes another large sip of his now lukewarm coffee and grins. “I meant like. As a person. You like Nancy as a person. You want her approval.”

Any irritation he had felt for Steve quickly fades into gently unfurling embarrassment and Jonathan quietly nods, accepting the other boys answer without a fuss. It was true, achingly so, with Jonathan only now becoming aware of how painfully obvious it was.

“We’re so...similar as people,” he allows himself to admit. Steve raises a brow in interest, but says nothing in response, allowing them to lapse into a weighty silence as Jonathan collects himself. When it becomes clear that Steve has nothing he’d like to add, Jonathan forces himself to continue. “We were the same,” he reiterates slowly. “But also not. But we really got one another, you know? Like, I know it sounds stupid, but there is this huge part of me that really wishes I could feel attracted to her. She deserved it, Steve. She is—_was_—,”—Jonathan falters, unsure of what he means to say, his tongue feeling thick and muddled in his mouth, hampered by his fuzzy hangover. He doesn't know _what _they were anymore, and if he was being honest with himself, that’s what hurts him the most right now. ”—my best friend,” he finishes softly. “I know I’ve ruined that with her,” he adds quietly. “But lying to her felt awful. Being with her like that...she deserved better.”

Steve is silent for a moment, his face slipping into that same speculative albeit slightly puzzled expression from before. Thinking. Quietly trying to understand.

Then, unexpectedly, and without hesitation he smiles: “Like me and Robin.”

Jonathan swallows thickly and blinks a few times.

“Huh?”

Steve screws up his face, like he’s trying to think of the right words to explain.

“Nancy is your…” he trails off again, pressing a finger to his chin. “Soul mate,” he settles on. “Your Elvis to your Costello. Your peanut butter to your jelly, your—,”

Jonathan lets out a loud snort.

“—I get it, Steve,” he laughs. Steve’s analogies are terrible, but for the first time all morning he’s managed to crack a smile. Then, a quieter part of him, a more intrusive part, takes hold. “If Robin’s your soul mate, then why aren’t you two dating?”

Steve in return smiles, but it’s secretive almost, like Jonathan has just mentioned an inside joke that he isn’t fully privy of. Then, Steve shrugs and he turns away, eyes scanning the patrons of the diner. He’s looking at the old woman again, paying her bill.

“Different story for a different time, Byers,” is all Steve offers him. The inside joke, as it were, seems like it will remain that way: a secret. “Maybe Robin will explain it to you one day. The point is, we’re not like that.”

Jonathan nods. He doesn’t want to pry and it seems that beyond this, Steve is unwilling to expound upon his relationship with Robin any further.

“_Anyways,_” Steve drawls without missing a beat. “Me and you are part of a club now. And it’s pretty exclusive,” he says, turning his attention back to Jonathan. He’s grinning again, almost deviously so, and Jonathan’s brow curls up in curiosity, taking another sip of his coffee.

“The Designated Nancy Wheeler Survivor Club,” Steve states smugly, crossing his arms and leaning back into his seat like what he had just announced was some sort of grandiose idea. “The D.N.W.S.C for short.”

Jonathan balks, and for the second time that morning, he chokes on his drink.

“_The Designated Nancy Wheeler Survivor Club_?” he repeats incredulously, tones hushed. Cautiously, he looks around the diner to see if Nancy had somehow heard them, despite being across the room and seated near the clattering of the kitchen. Nancy—and the Wheeler family by proxy—were happily ignorant to their conversation, with their waitress just now setting down their plates of food.

“You date Nancy Wheeler and then wish more than anything that you hadn’t,” Steve explains with a shit-eating grin.

Jonathan finds himself frowning.

“But...you loved Nancy.”

Jonathan watches as Steve presses his lips together tightly and then, seconds later, he nods.

“_Yeah._ And when we broke up, I still loved her. Her calling me..._us._..our relationship ‘bullshit’ at that party?” Steve scoffs. “One of the worst things anyone has ever said to me. And my father has called me a lot of shitty things,” he finishes wryly. It isn’t funny in the least, but for some reason, Steve is softly chuckling. Jonathan wonders momentarily what Steve means by that, or why it’s so funny, but he doesn’t get the chance to ask. “I loved her for a long time after that too. Hell, I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving her in fact.”

Steve’s confession is jarring, but not in a bad way. Jonathan thinks he can understand it: loving Nancy, that is. As a person, she was easy to love, and a part of him feels the same way. A part of him knows that he will never stop loving Nancy Wheeler in the same way that Steve does. Even so, it doesn’t stop Jonathan from withering under the sudden realization of what it might mean. For Steve, that is. Was that why he and Robin weren’t dating? And was this the moment Steve had been waiting for? For Nancy and himself to break-up?

“You should ask her out.”

He blurts the words out before he can even think about what he’s saying and instantly he feels his face grow hot. _Shit._ That was not what he had meant to say. Well, it was, but he hadn’t meant to say it so, _so_...clumsily.

“Uh, I won’t mind,” he adds as an after thought.

Oddly enough however, Steve’s eyes grow wide and suddenly the other boy is shaking his head: no, no_, no_, and he’s _laughing_.

“Oh, shit..._no_, you’ve got it all wrong, Byers,” Steve wheezes. “I don’t want to date her again.” He takes a moment to compose himself, stifling his laughter. “But you’ve got to admit: to have your first love be somebody like Nancy? Nancy Wheeler?” Steve smiles gently—he looks extraordinarily happy, and even brighter than the hot June sun. “Well...it’s a pretty high standard to follow. She’s an amazing person, don’t you think?”

And all Jonathan can do is nod, letting out a soft hum of agreement. Surprisingly enough, Steve gets it. He really does. He understands it—the whole Nancy thing, that is—even if they as people were wildly different. Opposite ends of the spectrum, really. And hell, having this conversation with Steve to begin with? _Steve Harrington?_ Never in a million years would he have thought it would happen. Ever. Never ever.

Then, Steve is pushing back his plate and standing to go. He still has half his breakfast in front of him, but it seems he’s finished playing with his food.

“C’mon Byers, let’s go. I think I need a nap.”

Steve pays for their food and despite Jonathan insisting that he’ll pay him back later, Steve waves him off flippantly, telling him not to look a gift-horse in the mouth.

Outside, the sun is creeping higher in the sky, bringing with it the same familiar stifling warmth Indiana was known for during its summers. And Jonathan, even if he won’t admit it, is suddenly very glad Steve had insisted they retrieve the car so early in the morning. He can’t imagine walking in this heat right now with this hangover.

As they climb into the car, Steve is suddenly quiet again. Like he had been last night. For a moment, all the brightness and energy he had been carrying with him all morning seems to fade, and Jonathan can see that his left leg is jostling up and down, vibrating with that same nervous energy Nancy had whenever she played with her hair. Before he can look away, Steve seems to notice that he is staring and instantaneously a hand clamps down onto his leg. The movement stops. The older boys’ cheeks tinge pink, just barely, and then he smiles, but the gesture feels fake.

As Steve starts the car, the engine turning over with a quiet purr, Steve speaks again, staring straight ahead onto the roadway.

“We should all do something together,” he then says. His voice is the same voice he always has: casual and easy and bright and distinctively _Steve’s. _But there’s something off about it too that Jonathan can’t quite place a finger on. “You, me, and Nancy. Robin too,” he clarifies. The car glides out of the parking lot, merging onto the main street. “Nancy’s going away soon. Robin again too. So are you. We need one last hurrah for Hawkins favorite gang of monster hunters,” he smiles.

Jonathan looks to Steve—any emotional transparency that he had let slip during his confessions in the diner are now carefully hidden by that same blinding smile, but Jonathan knows it doesn’t feel right. He looks casual and relaxed and pointedly unattached to what it was he had just suggested. As though if Jonathan turns him down, he wouldn’t really care. But Jonathan can see it—he can see that small crack in his smile and the whites of his teeth that are really just that: teeth.

He wonders what, if anything, Steve is really trying to say. If maybe, perhaps, he’ll actually miss them. Miss him. And if maybe, just maybe, this is Steve’s way of saying so.

Jonathan however, can’t bring himself to ask. It’s not his place, he thinks. And they weren’t that close of friends. Instead, he just nods, doing up his seatbelt and Steve says nothing else, simply nothing, and drives the car in the direction of the Byers house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are going places...slowly. And Steve just might be a big of a mess as Jonathan is. Also expect Robin in the next chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

It's a lazy Sunday a week past graduation and Nancy hasn't quite been on his mind as much lately, but she does pop up during the quiet lulls in between the afternoon movie matinees. It's during the quiet times that his mind tends to drift.

He thinks to the break up. To his mom and Will. To Steve. To all the idiosyncratic moments between then and now and weird silences and painful pauses and stupid silly instances where a shirt or a smell or a song will remind him of Nancy, Nancy, _Nancy _and all the things that he's lost.

Admittedly, he's lonely.

Which, if he's being honest with himself, is his own damn fault. She had called him a few days ago and asked him very politely, very cautiously if he'd like to come over and watch movies with her and the boys, but he had lied through his teeth—no, sorry, can't, _working_—and that was that.

He's not sure why he did it. Lied that was. Said no.

It didn't matter, he supposed, because she hadn't called him since. And despite a large part of him _really _wishing he and Nancy had actually tried that whole "let's stay friends" thing, he hasn't found the courage to try calling her back either.

It felt wrong. Too soon, even. And while he doesn't really know why—Nancy was his first and only ever relationship—so the whole "drowning in loneliness" part might just be on par for the course of what happens in the aftermath of a break up. Another part of him, a quieter part of him, feels like he should try asking Steve. Steve would know. Or maybe he'd just laugh at him.

Will and his mother are a different story: family, home, _sameness, _but simultaneously albeit inadvertently suffocating. It may just be because the bills are piling up again, or that his mother’s smothering but understandable hovering had again escalated in the aftermath of the Starcourt disaster, but at the moment his home life offered him very little in terms of comfort.

Thinking about it made him feel overwhelmingly guilty: he loves his family–and he knows he’ll never _stop_ loving them–but sometimes being in that house makes it hard for him to breathe.

As for Steve?

Steve was the tour de force of serendipitous encounters, a strange shadow that popped up like a blip on his radar. One minute there was nothing, and suddenly—_blip_—he was there. And where there was Steve, it also meant Robin.

Steve-and-Robin (not Steve_ and_ Robin—no, their names were said all in one breath, as one word, as one entity) were slowly becoming a permanent, albeit confusing fixture in his life.

Since his breakfast with Steve the week previous, the pair had been coming to visit him at the movie theater during work. And both of them had this peculiar habit of acting like what they were doing was somehow _normal._

Like the unpleasant looking burn mark on the carpet in the hallway of his house, or the way that Hopper was sometimes at their breakfast table in the mornings or sometimes not, Steve-and-Robin were always just _there_ now_._

Their casual encroach into his life aside, he still doesn’t quite know what to make of it. In fact, their unexplainable interest in him makes him feel quite dumb. But unlike his situation with Nancy, it's not like he can ask Steve about...well, _Steve._

The only _other_ person he's had to talk to lately is his new co-worker, Cheryl. She’s nice enough, Jonathan supposes, but she's a sophomore, and talking to her sometimes is like talking to a wall. He had learned fairly quickly with her to steer their conversations to a bland, superficial level, least she give him a blank, empty stare like a deer caught in the headlights. Asking Cheryl for advice on Steve and Robin would be like asking Will to do his high school calculus homework: cruel and pointless.

Cheryl, however, even if he _had_ wanted to ask her, wasn't around: she had disappeared to clean the lobby washrooms nearly 20 minutes ago, leaving Jonathan alone again. And beyond sorting through waxed paper cups again for the umpteeth time, there's not much for him to do.

Despite his restlessness, a part of this suits him just _fine_.

Outside, a loud siren from a passing ambulance fires up and he blinks twice, eyes scanning the empty atrium to the wide berth of the double wide glass doors. The ambulance barrels by and lets out another yawn, blinking heavily. Craning his neck to the left, he glances over to the slow ticking clock that hangs above the concession stand: 2:47 PM. He has another good 45 minutes of idleness before the next crowd of people sweep in for the 4:05 PM showings. Stretching, he then turns his attention back to the book he has been reading, the spine carefully cracked and pages splayed open upon the podium shelf.

_'The Naked Lunch_' is…interesting...but it’s hard to get fully immersed into the non-linear narrative when he’s constantly forced to check his surroundings for customers. Cheryl too (and expectantly) did not seem to understand his explanation of it: she had blinked at him like a fish out of water and decided that his book sounded "weird".

Her prettiness be damned, Jonathan did not like her. He didn't _dislike_ her either, but generally speaking he was ambivalent to her existence. At least she always volunteered to clean the bathrooms: Jonathan hated that job.

His eyes return to the page and he reads another few lines, but his mind drifts—back to Nancy, to Steve, to the overdue phone bill—and he's forced to reread the page carefully. He loses track again, this time thinking of the cash-in-hand, under the table job he has at Melvald's later, unloading the truck.

He flips the book shut: screw this.

He knows he can’t concentrate on this particular type of book right now, but in the absence of any real customers, he’s bored. And if he’s being honest with himself, tired. Very tired. Overworked and underpaid, his hollow attempts to bolster his meagre bank account have left him drained and reading the works of Burroughs certainly wasn't helping. Work however, was one of those necessary albeit painful adult things that he'd willingly saddled himself with far too young.

He fidgets.

He knows it has a purpose: formally, he’s accepted the offer to attend NYU come September. Informally, he knows he can’t afford it. A large lump forms in the pit of his stomach and he swallows thickly.

The financial issue was, or rather _is_ concerning. He knows why. He knows _exactly _why. He knows because a larger part of him is always vaguely aware of his responsibilities to home: to his family. He can’t imagine how, if at all, his mom is going to manage the household bills (and Will) without him. They barely scrape by as it is, and he knows due to the many heated arguments he's witnessed that his mom would never accept any help from Hopper. Her anxiety too was concerning: while she was getting better in terms of managing it, he also knows how stifling she can be. He _knows _she can be overbearing. And he _knows_ it drives Will nuts. In part, he also knows this was the reason why he was finding it so difficult to frame himself being away from his younger brother. Leaving Will to fend off her helicopter-like hovering alone would be cruel, even _with _Hopper as a part-time mediator.

He stills his tapping fingers and blinks. All of this, it seemed, was like some grand exercise in futility. Some bad joke. Working extra hours, worrying about Will, his mother, _the bills_...and not even knowing if he was truly going to even leave? If he wasn’t so miserably irked by it all, he might have made some lame joke about how Hawkins, Indiana was the town where young people were born to die.

He doesn't and keeps staring blankly out into the empty lobby instead.

What annoys him the most however, is that ever since he was a kid his mother had been telling him that he worries too much. And despite his consistent denials (it wasn't excessive worrying if he _knew_ they needed the extra money or the phone bill wasn't getting paid) he thinks that maybe, just _maybe_, she might be right (for once).

Which is why despite Jonathan not understanding them, Steve and Robin come as such as welcomed relief: they're a distraction and he secretly relishes in it.

When he looks up again, they're simply there. Both are chattering animatedly as the wide double doors to the entrance swing open, bringing with them a warm and sudden gust of summer wind. It sweeps across the room, sucked in by the whirling HVAC system and Jonathan can smell the July humidity—the slightly acidic waft of pine resin from the trees and earthy pungency of dry dirt—and he's suddenly very glad for the theatre's noisy air conditioning unit.

The two briefly appear immersed in their own little world: he can’t quite make out what their saying – maybe something about pizza, and maybe work – and then simultaneously their eyes swing in his direction. They both grin.

The sight of them—of Steve—in the afternoon light causes Jonathan's chest to swell. It's a feeling he doesn't promptly recognize and he chooses very pointedly to ignore it.

“Jonathan!” Steve drawls with a wide smile. He waltzes across the lobby and Robin follows, his cat-like twin.

Jonathan straightens himself, fiddling with the hem of his shirt: he’s suddenly very self-conscious of his awful purple work vest with his crooked name tag, despite the fact that both of them are also wearing their equally as ugly _Family Video_ shirts with the blocky orange and white font, and _god_, it's not fair because Steve still looks good in his. He squints as he reads their name tags: Robin’s is neatly printed in rounded, pretty cursive that reads: _Robin :)_, while Steve’s is a messy scrawl, barely legible, that reads as: _Steve ;)_

Jonathan bites his lip, repressing a small smile.

“You guys here to see something?” he asks conversationally. There’s nothing particularly decent playing at the moment, with none of the summer blockbusters scheduled to be released for another few weeks. “The next showings don’t start for another hour," he adds, turning to look back at the sign board.

Robin grins and Steve shakes his head.

“_Nah_,” Steve shrugs. “Just heading home. We saw you standing—not working, might I add,” Steve smirks, waggling his brows, “through the lobby windows.”

“We’re heading to dinguses’ to watch a movie in a bit,” Robin adds helpfully. In response to the charming moniker, Steve gets this _look _on his face and elbows the girl in retaliation.

Robin simply smirks, pushing back and ignoring him. Then she leans forward, side-eyeing Steve deviously, and announces in a very loud, very _not _inconspicuous whisper: “Steve has _the _biggest television I’ve ever seen. Probably the only reason why we’re friends.”

Steve scowls and rolls his eyes.

“My TV isn’t the only reason you come over, Rob’,” he sighs.

“Isn’t it though, Harrington?”

Steve ignores her.

“So wanna’ come, Byers?” Steve asks. “My parents aren’t home.” When he says this last part, he smiles, and it’s almost blinding.

“We’re ordering pizza,” Robin says.

“_And_ I’m making popcorn,” Steve adds smugly, as though this fact alone should seal the deal.

The two are dizzyingly in sync. Where one ends a sentence, the other seems to be able to pick up on the unspoken train of thought and finishes it fluently. Like two separate halves to one whole. Steve-and-Robin. One entity. One being.

Jonathan blinks. The invitation is...unexpected.

Momentarily, he tries to think about the last time he had ever really hung out with Steve unprompted, his recent visits to the Hawk aside. Beyond breakfast at Benny’s the other morning, he can’t quite think of any other concrete, memorable moments. The best and probably _only_ example he can think of was when he, Nancy, and Steve were studying at the Harrington household for midterms last year.

Not a lot of studying had occurred and he remembers that Nancy had had to leave to pick up Mike from the arcade. Steve, without Nancy’s fussy supervision, had convinced Jonathan that they should watch a movie until she returned. Neither of them had spoken a word during it, with Jonathan sitting in uncomfortable silence and waiting nervously for his girlfriends return. He _does_ remember that Steve had had this horribly annoying habit of munching on popcorn with his mouth wide open and it had distracted him for most of the film.

2 hours and one finished _Indiana Jones_ movie later, the phone in the kitchen rang. It was Nancy, explaining that her car had gotten a flat up near Spruce Street and she had just arrived home after waiting for a tow. Steve had then driven Jonathan home and told him they should "hang out" again sometime.

They never did.

As for Robin? Well. Beyond the occasional moments in which Jonathan had seen her with Steve, he didn’t really know the girl. He remembers her vaguely from high school, but it was silently acknowledged that they ran in different social circles. He knew now that she and Steve worked together at the Family Video store and that the previous summer they had also been co-workers at the ice cream shop. In the aftermath of Starcourt, Steve had alluded to their new friendship by means of their communal experience (or as Steve had put it bluntly: being drugged and tortured together by a bunch of asshole Russians makes for one helluva’ friendship). But beyond this surface level knowledge, Jonathan had never really dug deeper into their relationship, nor thought to.

Steve (and by proxy Robin) simply seemed to exist as outliers, drifting in and out of his peripheries like flighty meadowland larks, kept close only due to Steve's friendship with Nancy, and his strange, albeit accepted bond with Dustin and the gang of boys. Finding Steve and his car rolling up his driveway with Will in the passenger seat wasn’t uncommon, nor was it to discover that Nancy had invited him to tag along to an outing downtown.

But to have him show up at the theatre unprompted and without the expected intermediary relationships of Nancy or Will, _and_ to have him ask if he wanted to hang out?

Well, like most things Jonathan was slowly learning about Steve, it was weird. But not in a bad way. It was just…different. Something new and strange, but not unpleasant.

“—earth to Jonathan!”

Robin was waving a hand in his face, the chewed tips of her chipped painted fingernails dangerously close to poking him in the eye.

Jonathan blinks again. Shit.

“Oh, uh…yeah.” The words slip out of his mouth before he can even think about what he’s saying. Movies. At Steve’s. Tonight.

He watches as Steve’s face lights up like a kid on Christmas and instantly, Jonathan succumbs to a dawning realization and the subsequent sinking regret.

Melvald’s. The shipment truck. Unloading. _Also _tonight.

“Shit. Actually…_shit. _I can’t,” he quickly corrects.

Robin frowns and Steve’s previous childlike elation deflates like a pricked balloon. A surge of tension bolts from the depths of his stomach, crawling into his chest and poking at his ribcage and Jonathan almost swears again.

Before he has the chance to explain himself, Steve straightens himself up and nods.

“It’s cool. Probably got better stuff going on then watching bad movies with us, huh Byers?”

He’s smiling again, in that same way he always does: casual and effortlessly. It’s meant to disarm any tension, Jonathan suddenly realizes, to deflect any awkwardness, but again, for the second time that week, Jonathan recognizes it as _wrong._ Or maybe, Jonathan thinks suddenly, he had just never really noticed before. Steve’s fake smiles that is. Just teeth and parted lips: an ambiguous mask and emotional catchall that he slips in and out of, hiding behind.

“—I want to,” Jonathan says quickly—he feels bad, he really does—and Robin’s eyes squint into curious little slits as she crosses her arms, lips smacking loudly on her chewing gum. “I just…can’t. I’m unloading the truck at Melvald’s tonight,” he finishes lamely, shoulders sagging.

There’s a moment of silence—just a beat really—and the three of them simply stare at one another. Overhead, one of the cool fluorescent light tubes flicker, and in the background the pop machine fizzes, the motor sucking in gas. Jonathan feels awkward. Like he’s back in high school again, freshmen year, trying and failing miserably to make friends. Then, the moment passes. Robin’s eyes widen as she nods, and Steve mouths a large, silent “_ah_,” before grinning again. This one—this smile—Jonathan thinks, is real.

“Like I said, it’s cool,” he beams. And he means it. “There’s always a next time.”

Jonathan, like Cheryl caught in the headlights over _The Naked Lunch,_ nods: “Next time. Ok. Sure.”

Then, the two of them are leaving.

“Later, Byers!”

To which Robin adds a singsong: “...bye, Jonathan.”

Jonathan watches the pair struggle to make a quiet exit. Steve slings an arm around Robin’s shoulder as he steers her towards the doors. He loudly declares something about how it’s Robin’s turn to buy pizza, and she makes a loud noise—a nasally guffaw—and pushes him off of her.

“In your dreams, Harrington! I bought last time!”

Steve yelps at the shove and retaliates: like a child trying for a piggyback ride, he jumps on her backside, arms pulled tight across her chest.

For a split second, Jonathan watches in amusement, waiting for Robin to fall. She wobbles for a moment, like she’s about to eat shit on the floor, but the expected collapse never happens. Instead, the two are again uncannily in sync: Robin somehow intuitively seemed to _know_ what Steve had been planning and she casually leans forward. The balance shifts and she easily braces for his jump, tucking his knees under her arms in one fluid motion. Steve clings tighter and she spins them around, both of them shrieking with laughter.

Despite being nearly twenty, they both look like little kids at the playground.

Jonathan smiles and allows himself a chuckle: Steve’s size dwarfs the smaller girl—he’s like a huge, life size human backpack—and Robin laughs: “Get off me, dork!” With unsteady steps, she pushes the door open using Steve on her backside as leverage, her wobbly feet backing them outside and onto the street.

Then he watches as she purposely tips backwards: Steve falls, his ass hitting the sidewalk _hard_.

From his spot at the podium, Jonathan can hear Robin’s maniacal laughter through the large glass doors. From his spot on the ground, Steve is shouting something at her (_“Robin, you ass!”_) and Robin is sticking out her tongue. Then, she flips him the finger, grinning like a cat, and Steve leaps up. Robin takes off running and Steve chase's after her.

The two of them are weird, Jonathan thinks. Polar opposites. King Steve and the Band Geek. But they work in a strange and intuitively natural way, and in the confusing lurch of post-high school adolescents, he's not sure what to make of it.

_But it's nice_, another part of him suddenly realizes. The thought pops into his head unbidden and invasively. It's nice to see Steve like this. To see him happy and utterly and honestly _himself._ With no pretense and no posturing. He’s better this way. He’s like sunshine, with long fingers that seem to _push_ warmth into everyone around him with each and every touch, whether they wanted it or not. With each and every slung arm around waiting shoulders. With each and every smile. And if his stomach feels fuzzy and the smile on his face grows wider—well, he simply can’t help himself. He never saw this side of Steve in high school, and it makes him wonder if maybe Nancy did.

Was this the Steve Harrington she loved to talk about so much? Was this the one who she insisted was so important to her?

Again, Jonathan blinks and the fuzzy warmness in his stomach slips away. Then, his chest pulls tight and Jonathan tries not to think.

He looks at the clock: it’s 3:03 PM and something inside of him feels different.

\---

Steve and Robin show up at the theater again on Tuesday evening while on their break. They don't mention hanging out again, but in-between the slow crawl of customers they talk about their shift at the video store: how Mr. Vanders wife is out of town this week and _oh boy, _did he rent _a lot_ of adult videos, how the Will and the gang had been in earlier in the evening ("They rented _The Neverending Story_," Robin tells him. "It looked super lame," Steve adds flatly) and they ask him if he noticed that the old drug store up the street was being turned into some sort of cafe. Then, the 30 minutes is up and they shuffle out, waving: _bye, Jonathan, later Byers._

Again, Jonathan isn’t sure what to make of it, but it’s not _bad_.

On Wednesday, just Steve shows up.

“Robins off today,” Steve tells him, a little put out. He only sticks around for 15 minutes this time, buying a bag of popcorn and munching on it loudly much like he did that one time they had watched that movie together. He tells Jonathan it’s so he has something to eat while he watches movies at work.

“Your boss lets you watch movies?” Jonathan asks, eyes squinting.

“I mean...technically _no_,” Steve grins. “But there’s this little TV in the back with a VCR so we can rewind the tapes…” He meanders off, distracted by Cheryl as she walks by with a mop. “She’s cute,” Steve adds appreciatively, then he turns his attention back to Jonathan, beaming at him with an even wider grin: “Tonight’s feature film is _The Karate Kid_.”

Jonathan snorts.

“You’re _so_ gonna get fired.”

Steve shrugs, tossing a handful of popcorn into his mouth.

“It’s worked out for me so far, hasn’t it Byers?”

Jonathan can only shrug. Then, Steve is tipping his fingers to his brow as he swings himself around towards the door.

“Later, Jonathan." Jonathan watches as he shoves another large handful of buttery theater popcorn into his mouth and swallows, crunching on it loudly. It's just as annoying as it was before, he thinks.

Then, Steve is gone.

\---

He doesn’t see either Steve _or _Robin again until Friday. They arrive at the theatre late in the afternoon, tumbling through the wide double doors in a mess of light shoulder shoves and elbow prods.

“Byers!”

Steve calls him name from across the lobby as they push their way through the crowds. It’s admittedly a bad time for them to be here: Fridays are always busy, even more so in the summer.

Robin trails behind him, her Family Video shirt looking a little more wrinkled than usual and she yawns.

"It's just as busy here as it was at the store," she mutters, eyeing the crowds with disdain. Steve simply waves her off and leans heavily against the ticket podium, grinning straight at Jonathan.

Before he can say a word, Robin is tapping him on the shoulder.

“_Uh_, Steve?”

Steve turns to look at Robin, who is pointing to their left: behind them is a large group of frowny faced children, waiting in line to have their ticket stubs taken.

“Ah...shit. I mean. _Crap_.”

"Smooth one, dork," Robin snickers.

Sighing, Steve straightens himself up and steps aside, allowing the surly children passage. Jonathan tries and fails to hide a chuckle as he checks each individual ticket and waves the group of school-aged children through. When the kids disappear down the long hall leading to the theatres, Steve steps forward again, resuming his lazy lean on the podium.

“Break?” Jonathan asks. Up close, Steve looks just as tired as Robin. His hair even looked tired—just a touch flatter than usual—but still nice.

Steve shakes his head ‘no’, smirking.

“_Actually_, me and Rob’ just off work and we're gonna order a pizza. We’ve rented some movies again too.”

Robin steps forward, looking smug.

“_Rented_,”—she smiles, dragging out the word, as to infer through tone alone that the movies were in fact _not_ rented. “Borrowed” might have been a better way to say it. Or, if they were going for honesty, “stolen”.

“You down?” Steve asks.

Briefly, Jonathan feels strange again. Confused, maybe. It was just..._weird_ having Steve continue to show up at the theatre. Weird having him talk about his day. Weird to have _Robin _talking to him as well. Weird to have both of them ask him to hang out.

It was also, in a very new sense, alienating.

Was this what real friends did? And if so, what did that make them? He doesn’t really know (and it's painful to think about), so he shoves it all down and tries not to think, but the thought refuses to die and it’s quickly reborn as another muddled idea: was getting wasted at a party and drunkenly sharing a bed together all it took to somehow create a friendship?

He frowns. If so, it would explain why he didn’t have very many friends in high school. And despite himself, he almost wants to laugh. As if sleeping next to Steve Harrington was all it took for him to like him.

Instead, he thinks he might have managed to blink owlishly, or at least looked mildly dazed, because Robin lets out a long, drawn out sigh and rolls her eyes.

“Steve wants you to hang out with us,” she clarifies, crossing her arms tightly against her chest. “He said you were probably some sort of movie snob, but it would be “fun” to watch one with you. For real this time. So you better say _yes_’.”

“And don’t tell us you work at Melvald’s again,” Steve adds, his eyes narrowing.

Steve looks almost...serious...for once in his life, and Jonathan raises a brow.

“And if I am?”

Steve puffs up his chest, his grin defiant. It was almost as if he had been expecting the challenge.

“You’re not,” the older boy says confidently. “I already asked Will earlier today and he says you’re off tonight.”

Next to him, Robin is smiling, syrupy sweet with Steve’s grin growing to match.

“So _Byers_—,” Steve drawls.

“—movies tonight?” Robin finishes.

Like a cornered animal, Jonathan knows that the only way out is to give in.

\---

Steve waltzes back into the theatre lobby later in the evening, winking at Cheryl as he declares he’s going to have to steal away her favorite ticket-taker.

“We have a _date_ tonight,”—he enunciates the word 'date' with a hard click on the ‘t’—and throws his arm around Jonathan’s shoulders, smiling lazily. “With my couch and a box of pizza. Right, Jonathan?” The younger girl blushes a violent shade of red and so does Jonathan, but he’s not sure who he’s more embarrassed for: himself or Steve. He's also not sure how he's going to face Cheryl at work tomorrow.

They find Robin waiting in the car, feet propped up on the dash and smacking her lips through the chew of bright pink bubble gum. He’s still a bit flushed by the time he crawls into the backseat and Robin side-eyes him slowly, craning her neck in order to get a better look at him.

“What’s with the face, Jonathan? Steve kiss you or something?” she flatly asks.

Jonathan nearly chokes.

It’s clearly meant as a joke, but instead he feels himself shrinking further into his seat, his mind replaying Cheryl’s look of utter shock when Steve had announced they had a “date” together. _Ugh._

“Ask Steve,” is all he manages to mutter.

Robin snorts and whips around to look at Steve. “Jesus, Steve, what did you do to him?"

Steve simply shrugs, pushing the keys into the ignition and starting the car.

“Jonathan didn’t like it when I told the cute concession girl that we had a movie date tonight.”

And if for a fraction of a second that Jonathan thought that he was going to get any sympathy out of Robin, he was dead wrong. She begins to cackle, kicking her feet off the dash.

"Oh _god_," she laughs, tearing up. "The adorable little blonde? I wish I had been there. Did she freeze up? Stare? _Please_ tell me she at least looked as horrified as I'm imagining."

Steve hums noncommittally, but smiles smugly, shifting the car into gear and Robin continues to cackle.

"It's not a date," Jonathan mutters hotly from the back seat. He can't help it—the whole thing was _ridiculous._

Robin instantly swings around in her seat, her lips pursed.

"It's _kinda_ a date, Jonathan," she tells him sagely.

"A movie date," Steve adds, smirking.

"With friends. A friend-movie-date."

"A movie-friend-date."

"Exactly.”

Jonathan groans. Steve keeps smiling and turns on the stereo: its _Journey_ again and both Steve and Robin burst into obnoxiously loud off-key singing.

Jonathan briefly considers jumping out of the car to escape again, the vehicles movement be damned, but frustratingly enough he finds that the doors are locked.

\---

Steve's house is exactly as Jonathan remembers it, only maybe a bit messier. The sink appears to have dishes in it unwashed from a quick breakfast and there's a half-stuffed backpack sitting on one of the four kitchen chairs with distinctively female clothing hanging out of it.

His parents, as per usual, are gone.

When Steve catches his gaze lingering, he shoots him a sheepish glance.

"Sorry about the mess: Robin's been hanging out here a lot,” is all he offers.

Jonathan shrugs. Even with the dishes in the sink and the backpack half stuffed full of clothes, Steve's house has always been tidier than his own. The clutter isn't bad. In fact, it almost makes the house feel lived in, versus a photo from a Macy's catalogue.

"Mine's worse," he assures him. Between his mom working, Will and his friends, touch and go meals in between quick kisses to the cheek and shouted reminders about forgotten laundry in the wash, the Byers’ house was an absolute disaster compared to the Harrington’s. Maybe Steve knew this, maybe he didn’t. It didn’t matter: in response, Steve hums and sets down the pizza boxes on the counter and drifts towards the fridge.

"Beer?" he offers.

Jonathan nods and Steve hands him a cold can from the freezer.

"Rob'?" Steve shouts over his shoulder to the living room. "Beer?"

"And pizza! " her disembodied voice shouts back.

Jonathan cracks the pop tab on the beer, the can letting out a quiet hiss. He takes a silent sip, and instantly grimaces: it tastes horrible, like watered down pine sap.

“Terrible, right?” Steve smiles knowingly, cracking his own and taking a long, unrepentant sip.

Jonathan manages a small smile and nods.

“You’re not even legal—how do keep getting this stuff?”

Steve shrugs, rolling his shoulders and leans back casually against the counter. “It’s my dads."

There it is again: the fake smile.

Jonathan raises a lone, questioning brow. “And he doesn’t mind?”

Steve just shrugs again, letting out a tiny, stifled laugh—a small huff of air, really.

“Oh, he does. After that party I held in sophomore year? He keeps tabs on things.”

Before Jonathan can react, Robin pipes up from the living room.

“Hurry up you dorks! I’ve got some dancing to do!”

Jonathan raises a brow—_dancing? _

Steve smiles sheepishly and lets out an awkward chuckle. He seems...nervous. Uncharacteristically unsure. His runs a jittery hand through his hair and then tries for an apologetic glance, as though he was a child about to explain to his parents how he broke Grandma’s favorite vase.

“_Footloose_,” Steve exhales tersely. He’s still grinning awkwardly, still looking as though he’s waiting for Jonathan to explode. That, or for him to run straight to the door. Steve Harrington: bracing for impact. “It’s Robin’s favorite,” he adds hastily, as though this fact alone somehow made it better.

Jonathan blinks. Then, like Steve, he takes a long, _long_ drink of his beer, setting the can down empty.

Steve balks.

“Oh come on, Jonathan!” he wheedles, crestfallen. “It’s a fun movie! With good songs! And struggles! And—,”

“—and Kenny Loggins,” Jonathan says flatly, clearly unimpressed. He _knew. _It was one of his mom's favorite movies too.

But Steve is not to be deterred. Instead, his face eases into a shit-eating grin and he slings his arm over Jonathan’s shoulder, dragging him towards the living room. He’s not giving Jonathan a choice in the matter.

“You’ll love it,” Steve assures him, grabbing a box of pizza with his free hand. “_Trust me_.”

\---

Unlike the first time he had watched a movie with Steve, Steve is anything but quiet. Yes, he still munches loudly on popcorn, and yes, he still does it annoyingly so, but he also has this equally annoying habit of whispering in his ear whenever something he likes is about to happen.

In between sips of beer and bites of pizza, Steve likes to talk, and Jonathan isn’t the least bit surprised. Jonathan shushes him a few times, but Steve pays him no heed, and for the most part he continues to narrate his favorite bits into Jonathan ears every few minutes or so.It gets to a point where even Robin—whom Jonathan assumes would have be _used_ to Steve’s babbling—has to shush him. When he doesn’t, she smacks him roughly over the head with a couch pillow.

“_Quiet!_” she hisses temperamentally. “The best part is coming up and I need _silence _for it!”

The best part, in Robin’s _esteemed_ opinion, is when Ren McCormack dances angrily in the empty warehouse.

Robin is enraptured—from the corner of his eye, Jonathan watches as she stares spellbound at the screen with childlike devotion. It’s cute almost, considering he never pegged Robin has someone who was into cheesy dance flicks.

Despite this, he almost snickers: the dancing was all so corny, so over dramatic, and Robin’s love of it was silly too—and when Steve catches him biting his lip, he smirks, poking him in the ribcage, _hard_. Jonathan yelps, exhaling a loud albeit half-choked laugh.

Robin’s sour stare is enough to silence him, but then Steve shoots him this _look _and both of them start snickering again. He tries not to, but it’s made worse when Robin hits Steve with the pillow again, shushing him a third time, and neither of them seem to be able to stop.

“Oh, just you_ wait_, Harrington,” Robin says thinly, her lips pursed and full. “The end of the movie? Your favorite scene in the dancehall? I’m going to talk the _entire_ time. In French.”

This seems to sober Steve considerably and he straightens himself up, looking absolutely betrayed.

“You _wouldn’t_.”

Robin sticks out her tongue challengingly and smirks.

“I would. So either you and Byers shut it, or you can kiss your feel good moment goodbye.”

Steve nods gravely, sitting up straight and quiets himself. Jonathan follows suit, and this seems to satisfy Robin, although from the corner of his eye, he catches Steve side-eying him with the same _look_ from before. He watches as the others lips twitch up and Jonathan is forced to bite down on his own.

This was...fun.

Yes, the movie was awful, and yes, Steve never _shut up, _but it was enjoyable. Hell, Steve’s babbling was almost _endearing_. And Robin, with her guileless love of Ren McCormack and his melodramatic angst? Equally as endearing.

Robin never makes good on her threat to ruin the end of the movie and Steve never really does stop talking. It doesn’t matter: when the dancehall scene begins to play out, both Robin_ and _Steve pull each other up off the couch and join in.

Jonathan watches wide-eyed in equal parts horror equal parts amusement: their dancing is absolutely awful—they look silly and stupid and happy and carefree and absolutely _adorable. _

Together, they spin and flail and smile with their socked feet slipping dangerously across the smooth hardwood. Steve tries—and fails—to match the moves of Ren, and Robin, despite her equally embarrassing dancing, chastises him loudly for it. And when they both begin to sing-shout to one another: _“FOOTLOOSE! KICK OFF YOUR SUNDAY SHOES!”_ at the top of their lungs when the chorus rounds again, Jonathan desperately wishes he had his camera.

He wants to capture this moment: this feeling of Steve-and-Robin, and _Footloose_, and how they were simultaneously in and out of sync with their bad-good dancing. Of their inconceivably bright and breathless faces, held together more by laughter than actual inhales. Of Robin’s uncharacteristic silliness. Of Steve’s face. Of his gorgeous, carefree smile.

All of it makes Jonathan feel warm inside. Happy even. For the first time in weeks. And he promises himself right then and there that he never wants to forget it. He doesn’t want to forget this moment with Steve-and-Robin. Ever.

Blinking, he takes another sip of his drink.

And maybe it was because of the beer, and maybe it was just because of how silly the movie was, or how the two of them sucked at dancing, but he allows himself to grin widely, letting out a deep breathy laugh.

For the first time in a long time, his chest doesn’t feel tight.

And it’s nice. _Real_ nice.

Laughing however, was _maybe_ a mistake.

Steve catches it, his eyes growing wide, and he rounds on him like a predatory cat. Jonathan is helpless to stop what happens next: Steve grabs at his wrist, and then Robin does too, and then _both_ of them are pulling him up off the couch through a fit of breathless laughter.

“C’mon Jonathan,” Robin smiles brightly. “Dance with us!”

He’s pulled into the fray for all of two seconds, just the three of them holding hands and spinning in the Harrington’s living room before Jonathan manages to make a quick escape.

“I can’t, I _can’t_—,” he laughs, pulling away. _God_, this was so embarrassing. He slips out of their grip, out of Steve’s hands, and nearly tumbles onto the slippery hardwood.

Watching Steve and Robin dance to _Footloose_ and Kenny Loggins was one thing, but to do it himself? _Never. _It would be betraying a fundamental part of his personal, moral code. He simply couldn’t do it: not without expecting himself to be able to look at either of them in the eyes afterwards.

Smiling quietly to himself, he slips into the kitchen as the last few seconds of the movie plays out, Robin’s shrieking laughter overpowering the films soundtrack.

From the counter, he grabs another slice of pizza and perches himself against the kitchen table, decidedly hungry. Mid-bite, he catches Steve slink into the kitchen, grinning.

“So, what’d you think?”

Steve looks mildly disheveled, hair wild and cheeks flushed. He might even be sweating a bit.

Jonathan has to hold back a snort.

“It was...something,” Jonathan settles on. Neutrality was the best course of action in this case, he figures.

Steve however looks at him as though he had just uttered something absolutely sacrilegious.

“Really, Byers? After all that! After seeing the struggles of Ren and the townsfolk and the dancing—,”

“—And _your_ dancing.”

Steve’s cheeks flush bright pink—it's the first and only time he’s ever seen Steve actually flustered by something. Then, Steve coughs.

“You know how I said it was Robin’s favorite movie?” he asks quietly.

Jonathan nods, nursing his beer and taking another bite of his pizza, watching Steve carefully.

“I lied,” he says in one big exhale. “It’s actually _our_ favorite movie.”

Jonathan snorts. He can’t hide it this time.

“Oh_ really_?” he smirks, but not unkindly. “I couldn’t tell. Not with you talking into my ear about it every 5 seconds.”

Steve balks, shoulders sagging.

“So you absolutely hated it.”

He almost looks...disappointed...that Jonathan didn’t like the film and it was oddly heartbreaking. Jonathan finds himself fidgeting.

“Ren was okay,” he concedes, trying to give him something. “To look at I mean.”

Steve’s look of disappointment eases into a small smile, the corners of his lips curving up ever so slightly.

“See: I knew you’d find a redeeming quality.”

“Kenny Loggins is still a terrible musician," Jonathan adds, and he watches as Steve presses a dramatic hand over his heart against his chest. “And the song _Footloose_ is still awful.”

“You loved every minute of it, Byers: don’t lie.”

“Loved my ear bleeding,” Jonathan mutters under his breath, and Steve scoffs, flinging an empty beer can in his general direction. It misses, clattering against the kitchen table and falls to the floor. Both of them make eye contact, staring briefly at one another before bursting out into conjoined laughter.

He might have been a little bit drunk. Steve too. But he liked them like this. He liked them having _fun. _Together.

“Smoke?” Steve suddenly asks, pulling a crumpled pack from his pant pockets.

Jonathan nods—he wasn’t a smoker, but it seemed Steve wanted the company—and he follows him out the patio doors, leading to the backyard pool area.

Steve settles himself down near the edge of the pool, folding up his pant legs and pulling off his socks. He dips his feet into the clear, illuminated water, lighting up a cigarette and looking cool as ever. Jonathan drifts behind him awkwardly before Steve pats the concrete next to him, beckoning him to sit down. Jonathan nods and slips down beside him, perched cross-legged.

Next to him, Steve hums into the quiet of the night, taking a few more puffs on his cigarette before flicking it errantly into the pool. Then, from his shirt pocket he pulls out second cylindrical shaped object, thin and tapered at the tip. It's a joint, Jonathan realizes, and he blinks.

_Huh._

"You smoke?" Steve hums, rolling the thin paper smoke between his fingers idly.

Jonathan merely blinks again, staring at Steve owlishly.

For the second time that evening, Steve's cheeks begin to colour, his growing embarrassment reflected in the glowing whites of the pool lights shimmering beneath the clear water’s surface. Distantly, Jonathan recognizes the sound of crickets chirping in the swarth of pine trees that surround Steve’s house, and the frothy humming of the pool’s filtration system. Somewhere in the distance, a lone dog was barking.

The silence that had lapsed between them was admittedly unintentional and Jonathan hadn't meant for it to happen. It was just..._strange_...seeing Steve fingering a joint. Stranger still that he was asking him to smoke up with him. And in an attempt to reconcile this new information he had just learned about Steve Harrington, his brain had temporarily short-circuited. King Steve...the stoner?

“It’s okay if you don’t want to,” Steve suddenly blurts out, breaking the strange silence. “It just...it’s weird, ok? I sort of expected that someone like you would be into pot and—,”

His babbling snaps Jonathan out of his daze, and he abruptly cuts him off.

“—Someone like me?”

Jonathan watches as Steve fidgets ever so slightly, a row of fingers thrumming restlessly on the curve of his leg.

“_Uh._ You know…" Steve tries awkwardly. It was almost satisfying to see him so flustered. "You're all 'mysterious' and stuff,” he starts, his fingers curling into the air quotes. “_And _you were part of the photography club," he adds as if this fact alone was enough evidence to convict him.

Jonathan almost wants to laugh despite himself: this was turning out to be a terrible argument.

"So was Tracy Richards," he points out, lips twitching upwards.

"Shit...ok. _True_," Steve amends. Tracy was the antithesis to Jonathan: popular, polite, and egregiously social. Then: “You listen to weird music.” He states it flatly, like he’s trying his hardest to be taken seriously to prove his point. “And god forbid you admit that anything on the radio is actually half-way decent to listen to. All that new wave shit you listen to? And the punk bands? Will also tells me you’re into like..._art films_.” He says this last part distastefully, wrinkling his nose as though the words “art" and "films” together had somehow left a bad taste in mouth.

Jonathan can’t help himself this time and lets out a small laugh. Having himself summarized like that, by Steve no less, made him painfully aware of how decidedly stereotypical he was. Like an archetype straight out of one of his novels, Jonathan Byers was the Holden Caulfield of Hawkins, Indiana.

“_God_,” he sniffs. “Am I that much of a cliché?”

“A little bit,” Steve smirks. He chuckles quietly alongside him, tossing his head back. “_So_,” he then hums. “Did you want to smoke a joint or not?”

Jonathan exhales quickly, all one breath, all one word, nodding: “Yeah. Sure,” and Steve beams.

He watches quietly as Steve lights up the joint, burning the end quickly and inhaling a few times in short, quick draws. It lights evenly and emits a thick pungent scent that Jonathan was familiar with, masking them both into an earthy embrace. Then Steve exhales, coughing slightly, the joint perched lightly in between the tips of his fingers. He inhales off it one more time, this time deeply, and let's out another stifled cough before passing it off to Jonathan.

The joint was neatly rolled and slightly thinner than a pencil, Jonathan observes, and as he carefully rolled it between his resting fingers, he realizes that Steve was staring at him.

“What?” he can't help but ask.

Steve’s curious look turns predatory, his lips twitching upwards.

“You look nervous. Are you?”

Jonathan fidgets, fingers rolling the joint between his fingers again and shrugs: there was no point in lying. “Yeah, a little.”

“Is this your first time?”

“No, I’ve been nervous before.”

There’s a thick second of silence before Steve starts to snicker. It quickly evolves into loud, uncontrollable laughter, his smile noticeably broader than usual. It seems to go on forever—stupidly so—and when the laughter finally peters out, Steve is out of breath and there’s tears in his eyes.

“No _shit_, Jonathan,” Steve gasps, trying his hardest not to laugh again. “I meant about getting high.”

Oh.

Jonathan shrugs noncommittally before looking Steve straight in the eye. Then, he takes a long, deep drag off the joint. Unlike Steve, he inhales it smoothly, holding it in momentarily before he leans forward into the older boy. Casually, he exhales in the same fluid manner, the smoke pooling past Steve’s face in a thick, steady stream.

Jonathan is secretly pleased with himself and for the second time that evening, he curses himself for not having his camera with him: Steve had stilled and was sitting next to him slack-jawed and stunned. Curiously enough, his cheeks were also slowly colouring to a faint albeit noticeable pink.

Hopefully _that _answered Steve's question.

When Steve still doesn't say anything, Jonathan smirks, taking another quick hit from the joint before exhaling again, this time sending the smoke straight up as he tilts his head sky high. No cough. No hesitation.

"No," he finally says lightly, passing the joint back to the flustered looking Steve. "I've been high before. You were right about me being the type."

Steve takes one last drag and offers the joint back, humming in response. As if he still didn't know what to say or how to say it. As if somehow Jonathan smoothly blowing smoke into his face without so much as a cough or wheeze had broken his brain in the same way Jonathan discovering Steve smoked pot had broken his. Steve Harrington, for the first time in his life, was rendered speechless. It satisfied Jonathan in a deep, strangely comforting way.

With Steve still holding out the joint, Jonathan shakes his head, waving him off—he's good, he thinks; warm and fuzzy and slightly euphoric—and he watches mutely as Steve extinguishes the remains of the joint on the patio tiles, chewing his lip.

Then: "I felt weird asking you to be honest," Steve suddenly laughs. His voice seems softer—slipperier almost—and noticeably lighter. "But Robin _swore _to me that she had seen you smoking up behind the gymnasium in high school before."

Jonathan let's out a small hiss, his breath dissolving into laughter.

"Sounds about right," he snickers. “Skipping gym to smoke up_ behind_ the gym.”

Steve meets his gaze with a wide, sloppy grin.

"So what are you so nervous for then?"

Jonathan shrugs, any previous inhibitions about speaking freely in front of Steve having been dissolved into the ashes of the joint.

"Well _Steve, _like you said: isn't this a bit weird?"

Steve hums again and starts laughing alongside him, kicking his feet up in the water.

"We fought inter-dimensional monsters before," he decides on, kicking the water towards Jonathan. It splashes up, droplets spraying at his face, and Jonathan lightly shoves at his shoulder in a silent protest: stop. "I think us getting stoned together ranks pretty low on the list of 'weird'."

Jonathan snorts loudly.

"Man, I didn't even know you _got_ high."

"And what's so strange about that?" Steve shoots back, leaning back on the palms of his hands.

"I dunno…" he shrugs. But he does actually. He knows _exactly _why it's strange. "You're 'King Steve'," he ends up exhaling, his voice laced in quiet amusement. "Captain of the high school varsity basketball team and the fastest pitcher in the tri-county area. ‘King Steve’ doesn't get high: King Steve crushes beers at high school keggers and hosts house parties," he finishes smugly.

It's Steve's turn to snort and Jonathan watches through curled lips as the older boy dissolves into a fit of wheezing laughter.

"_Fuck—,”—_he laughs again, choking on his own words. “Fuck _you_, man," Steve laughs, barely able hold it together. He bites down on his lip hard and tries his damndest quell his rampant giggling. Then, he sits up straight, as if trying to be taken seriously again, his gaze meeting Jonathan directly in the eyes. "If I'm King Steve, then you're Mr. Anti-Establishment: the local resident loner who is currently _with_ the King and getting high with him at a pool where he used to host those house parties. So whose more out of character, _hm, _Jonathan?"

Jonathan tries to stop and think of an appropriate response: something witty and smart and bitingly Jonathan-esque, but he can't: he's too damn high and their both too damn giggly and instead he just starts laughing again. Steve joins in and both of them lose it completely.

God, both of them were just so _stupid._

They laugh together for a long time, both of them unable to stop, feeding and growing off each other's shared looks and quiet giggles. They laugh so much that Jonathan’s stomach starts to hurt and when they finally exhaust themselves, Steve seems more subdued, more mellow. He slips backwards on the edge of the pool, cradling the back of his head in his hands, eyes staring up at the stars in the clear night sky.

They’re quiet for a bit, and Jonathan can hear the same dog from before, still incessantly barking, the same crickets in the wood, the same hum of the pool filter. It’s nice, he thinks, but in a different way then it was before. Better somehow.

Or maybe he was just stupidly stoned.

He almost starts to laugh again when Steve begins to speak, tempering the quiet with his slow, smooth sounding voice.

“Actually, it was Robin who introduced me to the stuff. She said it might be good for my anxiety." He clicks his tongue loudly and lets out a low whistle. "You were right though: I never smoked it in high school; too busy crushing kegs,” he finishes with a small smile.

Jonathan cranes his head to the right, staring down at Steve laying sprawled on the patio stones. He’s slow to breathe, chest rising and falling in a very shallow way with one leg propped up on the edge of the pool and the other left dangling in the warm water._ Relaxed_ is the word that comes to mind. At peace. And there’s no falsities ringing through in the curve of his smile, or any remnants of that nervous energy that Jonathan notices that he sometimes gets that manifests in the thrumming of his fingers or the shaking of his leg.

He thinks he should ask him about it. The anxiety thing, that is. What he meant by it.

Instead, he opts for the easy way out and slips in a smirk.

“Told you,” he chuckles, but not unkindly.

Jonathan feels like a coward.

“Oh yeah—I mean, Nancy would have_ killed _me if I got high,” Steve tells him, his smile growing to match. “How she never killed you was always a mystery to me.”

“I mean...I never smoked it when I was around her,” Jonathan confesses. On the hem of his shirt is a frayed thread, and Jonathan watches as Steve picks at it absently. Then, he yanks it hard and it snaps off satisfyingly quick. “But you’re right. She would have killed me. And you too.”

Steve nods from his spot on the ground knowingly. Jonathan smooths out his shirt from where Steve had yanked the errant thread, and then Steve fishes in his pant pockets for his crumpled pack of cigarettes. He lights one up, the end crackling brightly as he inhales. They lapse into silence again, Steve wordlessly offering Jonathan a puff of his smoke with Jonathan waving him off. Weed was one thing, but cigarettes were another.

Then, out of nowhere, Steve announces: “Shit man, I’m hungry,” and Jonathan bursts into laughter again.

“Uh yeah, Steve, cause you’re _high_.”

Just then, the patio door slides open and Robin sticks her head out.

“Hey dorks,” she says, then pauses, sniffing the air. She frowns. “...did you guys smoke up without me?”

From his spot on the ground, Steve grins wide, and tilts his head ever so slightly to meet her gaze.

“Nope,” he smirks, the 'p' making a large popping sound.

“You _asshole!_” she chides, but her tone is soft despite the way she crosses her arms flat against her chest.

“Jonathan made me do it!” Steve exclaims wildly, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

Robins eyes drift to Jonathan, brows raised high as if to say: _oh, really?_ Both he and Steve are smirking, both of them higher than kites, both of them on the verge of third—or was it forth?—laughing fit, but then Jonathan shakes his head and points accusingly to Steve. The other boys’ eyes grow wide at the betrayal and his mouth falls open.

“And here I thought you were my _friend_!” Steve mutters, but he’s laughing—they’re both laughing—“Instead, you throw me under the bus!”

“_What _bus?” Jonathan asks, turning to Steve. “You’re the one who tricked me out here with cigarettes.”

“There’s a bus, Byers, and its name is Robin!”

In response, Robin sighs, shaking her head and emitting a quiet sounding chuckle.

“Whatever you idiots, just hurry up: I’ve got your cheesy romance flick set up,” she announces, and slips back inside, shutting the door.

Jonathan stifles his laughter and turns his gaze back to Steve, raising a brow again. _A cheesy romance flick?_ Steve at least has the humility to at least look embarrassed this time.

“_Dirty Dancing_,” he admits out right, holding back another shit-eating-grin.

“Oh my_ god,_” Jonathan exhales, and he tries not to laugh again, he really does, but it’s so funny—Steve liking dumb romance films, dumb dance films—and he bursts like a balloon, sniggering.

“It’s good!” Steve whines, trying—and failing—to defend himself. “It has a good story!”

“Like _Footloose_?” Then: “I never took you as a romantic,” Jonathan wheezes, emboldened by the high.

Steve waggles his brows.

“Guess I shouldn’t tell you about my _amazing _comic book collection then,” he grins, and he’s not even hiding his embarrassing secret hobbies now. Not one bit.

“_Superman_?” Jonathan deadpans, trying for the typical machismo Steve was known for.

Steve huffs, as though offended, and shakes his head. “_Young Romance.”_

“Those cheesy ‘true love’ stories?” Jonathan balks. He was almost in tears now. All of it: it just kept getting _worse. _

“C’mon,” Steve says smiling, ignoring Jonathan’s laughter. He pushes himself up off the ground, extending a hand and helps Jonathan up. “Robin’s probably started it without us.”

Jonathan nods and follows Steve back towards the house. As they slip back into the kitchen, with Steve smiling and Jonathan quietly sniggering, Steve smugly adds: “Laugh all you want, Jon': you get to choose the movie next time. And then—_and then_ we’ll see who has shitty tastes in movies.”

_Art films_, Jonathan thinks grinning, and as if Steve was able to read his mind, he shoots him a knowing look. As if he knew whatever Jonathan was going to bring would be _terrible._

And honestly, he couldn’t wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was stupidly long, but I couldn't really find a good place within it to break it up into two separate chapters, so you get close to 10k. And if you haven't seen the original 'Footlose', it's worth a watch (but also very melodramatic in that cheesy 80s sort of way). In the very least, go watch the end scene in the dancehall to get an idea of how ridiculous Steve and Robin are ;)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, it's been 5 months and this chapter is pitifully short compared to the others - but I promise ch. 5 is already half way finished, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

“_Yo,_ Byers!”

Steve’s greeting, as per usual, is predictably unanticipated and shamelessly brash.

Its confident overtones cut through the unusual silence of the Byers home, and from his spot at the table, Jonathan looks ups and _blip_—there’s Steve. He was all smiles and black shades as he tumbles into the kitchen, nearly tripping over an errant pair of shoes as he slips past the pair of boys in the hallway who were bickering over who got the privilege of riding shotgun in Steve’s car.

Confused, Jonathan stands, pushing aside the stack of bills he had been leafing through and feels himself involuntarily stiffen as Steve sidles up next to him. He pushes his sunglasses up to rest on the crown of his head, mussing up him perfectly coiffed hair, and flashes Jonathan a large smile.

“Uh…hey, Steve.”

Even to his own ears, Jonathan’s greeting sounds considerably less enthusiastic than Steve’s. Internally, he winces. He hadn’t meant to sound unimpressed, it was just that…it was Thursday. He hadn't really been expecting to see Steve today—in the bare minimum, they might have crossed paths at the theatre this weekend, _maybe_, and if Jonathan was particularly lucky, Steve _might_ have suggested another date for their movie night.

“You here for Will and Dustin?" he then asks, his voice betraying his poorly concealed bewilderment.

Because it was one thing to see Steve at his place of working bumming popcorn for his shift at the video store, it was a totally different animal to have him walk through the front door of his house like he owned the place. Mainly, it feels weird, Jonathan decides. Steve never did that. Steve patiently, if not politely, waited in his car whenever he picked up the boys, and not once had he ever dared to waltz into the Byers’ house unannounced.

Maybe their last hangout had somehow changed that, Jonathan thinks. The rules of engagement in their relationship, that is. Maybe it had somehow switched from _sometime-friends who got stoned and watched bad movies together _to _sometime-friends who now felt comfortable walking into each other’s houses. _At least in Steve’s books it did. Jonathan isn’t quite sure how he feels about it still.

The hesitation in accepting this new nuance as part of their friendship was mainly due in part to the fact that his mind kept drifting back to that day in the theatre lobby. To the first time where Steve and Robin had approached him by the ticket podium and asked him if he’d like to hang out with them. To that moment, where as he watched Steve walk out the door into the afternoon sun, his chest pulled tight and he had felt a distinctive, albeit unknown quality root itself in the pit of his stomach.

It was a strangeness that he still couldn’t quite quantify with words. It wasn’t a weird feeling, he decides, nor a sick feeling, but it just felt different, and almost as if he was struggling to breathe.

Every once and a while, that feeling would re-emerge, pushing up from the depths of his guts like a twisting vine and take hold of his lungs. And it only ever seemed to happen when Steve was around. Like now.

Next to him, Steve hops up onto the edge of the kitchen table, forcing himself directly into Jonathan’s line of view.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “Bringing the boys over to the Wheeler’s for their weekly Dungeons and Dorks shindig.”

From the hall, an irritated Dustin lets out a loud: “Its dragons, Steve—_dragons!_” and Steve grins, inadvertently letting slip his intentions of purposely annoying the younger boy. Jonathan in turn allows himself a small smile. Steve’s habit of teasing Dustin was decidedly endearing, if not a bit childish.

“_Anyways_,” Steve drawls, tapping his fingers along the edge of the tabletop. “I ran into your mom at Melvald’s today. She said you were off.”

Absently, Jonathan finds himself nodding.

“Yeah. Till Saturday, actually.”

“Cool,” Steve says. Then: “I’m hungry, so come with?”

Oh.

Jonathan blinks, and suddenly the thoughts in his mind were skittering around like oil in a hot frying pan. Steve wanted to hang out with him again, like right now—great!—but the idea of _the Wheeler’s house_ was synonymous with _my ex, Nancy_, and the lingering memories of their breakup surge forward in a flood of confusion. He hadn’t actually been thinking about it much lately, but in this exact moment (and he doesn’t want to admit it), the thought of seeing Nancy again actually makes him feel sick.

“I…” he tries awkwardly, not sure of how to gently turn Steve down. “That’s probably not the best idea,” he finished quietly, frowning. He and Nancy still weren’t speaking. There had been nothing but radio silence between them since that last stifled phone call, the one where Jonathan had cautiously turned down her invitation to come over.

But turning down Steve? For whatever reason, it feels really, really shitty. He just really hopes that Steve could understand that.

Across from him, Steve’s face slips into a muddled look of confusion, his brows drawing tight and revealing thin lines that dance across the length of his forehead. Then, he hops off the kitchen able, and shoots Jonathan _a look_, as though he doesn’t quite understand what the big deal is.

“Burgers, Jonathan,” Steve carefully clarifies, his brows still knitted thickly together. “I want to get burgers. You telling me you’re allergic to food now?”

Instantaneously, Jonathan feels the tightness in his chest deflate like a pricked balloon and lets out a breathy:

“_Oh.”_

Burgers. Steve was inviting him for burgers. Not to the Wheeler's house. Burgers he could do.

“I thought…” Jonathan murmurs to himself more than to Steve, then stops himself. He feels silly and unnaturally emotional. “Never mind,” he decides. “Yeah, sure. Lemme grab my jacket.”

The group of boys squeeze themselves into Steve’s car, with Steve loudly declaring that Jonathan gets the privilege of riding shotgun, much to the glaring disappointment of Dustin.

“Are you coming to join the campaign, Jonathan?” Dustin then asks, visibly confused by the oldest Byers’ presence in the BMW.

From the corner of his eyes, Jonathan catches Steve’s small smirk as he palms the steering wheel in a smooth left hand turn. Was them hanging out together really that weird? Dustin seemed to think so. Unwillingly, he feels his face grow hot at his mounting irritation.

“No,” is all he abruptly offers Dustin, and the car returns to silence.

Will too, then shoots Jonathan a look, like as though he didn’t quite _get_ why he was coming along, or why his brother was even hanging out with Steve, let alone _talking_ to him. But if he had anything to say about the situation, Will—unlike Dustin—chooses to stay silent. Jonathan, already mildly uncomfortable, tries his best to ignore their curious eyes seeking him out in the reflection of the rear view mirror and focuses his gaze on the slip of asphalt disappearing under the curve of Steve’s car instead.

To make matters worse, his blunt rebuttal to Dustin’s question leads to a awkwardly quiet ride to the Wheelers’, tempered only by the fuzzy din of the radio and the boy’s occasional whispers emanating from the backseat. Then, when they pull into the driveway and Steve announces that he can’t pick them up later—he’ll be busy—the duo’s quiet consternation morphs into graceless tactlessness.

“Busy?” Dustin squints. He was wearing the same face Will was, as if he were altogether confused by the implication that Steve would have some sort of agenda that went beyond giving them rides. “Busy doing _what_? You’re never busy!”

“None of your business, Henderson,” Steve snaps. “Besides, I’m not your personal taxi driver,” he reminds him. As the pair bicker, Jonathan feels him shrink in his seat. As the car continues to idle in the driveway, his eyes flicker to the brick façade of the Wheeler’s house—the windows were thankfully empty—but the last thing he wants or needs is the withering gaze of a shadowed Nancy to remind him of his shortcomings as a boyfriend, nor her thin smile that somehow managed to harangue guilt within him about his newfound friendship with Steve.

“And since when do you hang out with _Jonathan?_” Dustin then asks, as if Jonathan wasn’t sitting with them in the vehicle, invisible, or somehow a lifeless fixture of the car itself, like a cup holder or the ashtray.

Steve’s eyes narrow and he shoos the boys from his car, shifting the gearstick into reverse.

“You’re getting awfully mouth for a kid who gets _a lot_ of free rides,” Steve reminds him testily.

Jonathan watches as Dustin frowns, his eyes gawking towards him in the passenger seat before returning their affront to Steve.

“Well, soooorry,” he rebuffs. “But’s its just _weird_ seeing you guys hanging out without, you know…trying to kill each other.”

Steve’s gaze swivels to Jonathan just in time for him to catch him rolling his eyes. How had Steve asking Jonathan to lunch turned into such a big thing?

“Have we ever tried to kill each other, Byers?” he then asks him coolly, raising a brow.

“Once,” Jonathan answers truthfully and shrugs. The fight in the alleyway had been a one off thing. Beyond that, there had been no other serious attempts to beat the living shit out of each other since.

“See, Henderson—it was just once,” Steve says dismissively. “And now we’re fine. So go play your Dungeons and Dingos and have fun.”

“It’s _dragons_, Steve. Dragons!”

Steve waves him off and Jonathan waves a quick goodbye to Will, who thanks Steve for the ride. Then, Steve is quickly reversing his car out of the Wheeler’s driveway and steers them towards Benny’s.

“Kids, huh?” Steve says, his voice laced with irritation. “Should have made the brat walk. Ungrateful little shit…not your brother, mind you,” he amends hastily. “Will’s a nice kid. Has a lot more manners than Dustin does.”

Jonathan nods, letting out a small hum of agreement—Will had always been a polite kid—and Steve quickly cranes his neck to look at him, a small frown pulling on the corner of his lips before his gaze returns to the road.

“You were real quiet back there,” he then announces casually. “Still are. More than usual. Seeing your ex’s house is _weird_, right?”

Jonathan feels like he’s had the rug pulled out from under him, but despite the shock, allows himself a small nod. There’s no point lying, he thinks, especially if his discomfort was that glaring obvious. A small part of his also feels relief—Steve _got it_—and it makes Jonathan feel marginally better about his sudden uneasiness.

“Earlier, I thought you were asking me to hang out at the Wheeler’s, actually,” he then admits sheepishly.

Next to him, Steve lets out a loud snort and begins to chuckle.

“Jesus, Jonathan—I know I can be a bit of an ass sometimes, but I’m not _that _much of an ass. At least, I try not to be.”

“Debatable,” Jonathan smirks, and Steve frowns, reaching over and punching him lightly in the shoulder.

“_Ow_—," he says, but he doesn't mean it, not really. "See?”

Steve reaches out to hit him, only this time even softer, and Jonathan smiles.

\---

“So you’re coming over tomorrow for our movie night, right?” Steve asks, reaching into his jean’s pocket for his wallet. “Robin keeps asking about it. I think she’s curious about what movie you’ll bring. Me too, actually.”

Lunch had been similar to their breakfast a few weeks ago, with Steve far more interested in people watching and talking than actually eating his food. This struck Jonathan as peculiar, especially due to his earlier insistence that he had been hungry. Instead, Steve talked about his shifts at the video store this past week, about Robin and her mom (Jonathan learns that they didn’t really get along), and surprisingly enough, about the last time they had hung out together. Steve had been nothing short of giddy as he mentioned how stoned they had been and surprised Jonathan even further when he said: _man, we should do that again sometime. Getting high with you was pretty fucking fun, Byers._

It had made Jonathan feel weird again, and it took a considerable amount of will power to swallow that feeling down.

“What time?” Jonathan asks.

“Hm—maybe four or five? Robin might be late.”

Jonathan nods.

“Sounds good.”

Then, he stands to go, reaching for his own wallet from his jacket pocket, fumbling with the inverted sleeve. Steve however, flippantly waves him off.

“Nah, I got it,” he says snatching up Jonathan’s bill from the tabletop.

Jonathan frowns.

“I already owe you for breakfast,” he reminds him. But Steve just shrugs, like it’s no big deal, and escapes towards the counter before Jonathan can protest any further.

Right. So that was two meals he owed Steve now.

In the absence of having to pay for his bill, Jonathan steers himself towards the door and out into the diner’s parking lot. Outside, the sun had reached its apex in the afternoon sky, and the heat makes Jonathan feel listless and uncomfortably warm. Bringing a jacket had been a bad idea, he thinks. Slipping it off, he waits near the car and finds himself turning back towards the restaurant, watching Steve through the wide, dirty windows.

Steve was grinning at the waitress at the till, leaning heavily on the countertop and extending his arm in a display that makes Jonathan think he must be telling a story of some sort. There was a wink and a laugh, and then Steve pulled out a few bills from his wallet, setting them down on the counter. Jonathan sees the waitress’ obvious giggle in response, and Steve smiled again, his lips moving rapidly. Jonathan could only imagine what the pair were talking about—it seemed like flirtatious banter at best—but then a sudden, unbidden thought strikes him: Steve’s smile was fake.

In fact, the entire interaction with the waitress had been fake. The big laughter? The weird, exuberant way he was leaning into the waitress, as though every word she had said had somehow wrapped him around her fingers? The whole routine, he realizes very unsettlingly, was just one big show.

Steve Harrington was faking it. I mean, sometimes, he wasn’t, Jonathan thinks. Like when he was with Robin. That was real. Or even earlier, when Steve had reminisced about their poolside activities with the joint. Also real. But other times—times like now—he realizes Steve was facing the world with invisible walls built up high around him. Any maybe it’s just because Jonathan wasn’t as smart as everyone ever said he was, or maybe it was because he simply hadn’t _cared_ before, but he was very suddenly, very acutely able to notice it now more than ever before. The fakeness. The walls. The teeth. The masks.

Like all those little times where Steve’s leg would start to shake quietly? Or when his smile seemed larger than ever, blindingly energetic and almost offensively bright?

He was lonely, Jonathan realizes. Really, really lonely.

All of the signs were right there, slipped in with every light-hearted conversation he’d never had with him. With every knowing nod, or casual joke, or stupidly obnoxious greeting. It was the pull of wanting to be accepted. Pieces of it. Small, near invisible signs of something unspoken that went beyond what was simply expected of being Steve Harrington.

Jonathan finds himself frowning. He doesn’t get it. The loneliness part. What about Steve made him desperate for the attention and acceptance of others?

And when Steve tumbles out of the diner a few minutes later, Jonathan is still frowning.

“Jesus, Jonathan—you’re still not pissed that I paid for your lunch, are you?” Steve jokes.

Jonathan pushes himself off the side of the car and shakes his head, murmuring a near soundless: “no”.

Steve just grins again, fiddling with the locks on the driver’s side of the door, and _blip_—there it was again. Another meaningless smile. Hiding any and all of his true feelings as to what he really might be thinking about Jonathan’s ill-tempered expression.

It annoys Jonathan, more than he cares to admit, but like Steve, he doesn’t have the courage to talk about it.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s well past five when Jonathan pulls into the Harrington’s driveway—after much thought, he had brought Jean-Luc Godard’s _Bande à part _for them to watch—the wheezy rumbling of his car’s engine disturbing the otherwise quiet suburb in which Steve was afforded the luxury of living in. It was quietness that was different than the one that surrounded the Byers’ home, the silence mediated by the largeness of the home owner's bank accounts rather than by the surrounding woodland scrub and brush, all with the added bonus of carefully manicured lawns free of weeds and dry spots. Jonathan tries not to think about it—about the stark differences in their otherwise coinciding lives spent living in the small town of Hawkins—like how the only reason why Steve’s house in the woods was somehow better than Jonathan’s was because his family had a higher tax bracket, but the thought is lost when he notices an unfamiliar car sitting in the driveway.

Boxing in Steve’s brown BMW was a sleek white Mercedes Benz.

He blinks and blinks again and when he realizes he can’t easily place who the owner of the vehicle is, he pulls his car aside to the left of the parked motorcade, careful to leave adequate space between himself and the line of vehicles. It was just weird, he thinks, because he didn’t know Robin had a car. She was always bumming rides off Steve.

It’s only when he’s two seconds away from knocking on the front door does he stop. There’s the sound of a voice—more of a yell, really—and it belongs to Steve. What he’s saying is indescribable at first, just sharp, heavy pitched staccatos, their clarity muffled by the heavy wooden barrier separating himself from the inside of the Harrington home. For a second, there’s nothing but silence. Then, the voice—no, wait, its voices—get louder and louder, and very vehemently, very _clearly_, Jonathan hears Steve shout: “Yeah, well—_fuck you too!_”

Jonathan freezes, his arm frozen mid-air, his knuckles no more than 3 inches away from the white painted veneer of the front door.

The Mercedes, he realizes, doesn’t belong to Robin.

Jonathan blinks.

He knows he should leave. He _knows_ he should. He knows very intimately, very acutely, with a painful idiosyncrasy what the yelling meant. Instead, he finds himself frozen in place, paralyzed by the angry voices coming from within the house.

Then, there’s a loud slam—the sound of something breaking—and Jonathan swears, the would-be spell that had been cast over him effectively broken with the shattering of glass. Shit. _Shit._

He needs to leave. He knows how this works. He knows that you don’t tell people about this sort of thing. That if you ever did witness it, you kindly, if not awkwardly pretended that it never happened. Dirty laundry was dirty laundry and it was something that was better kept behind closed doors. He knows this, because he knows people ignored the things that were happening between him and his father until they couldn’t.

But Jonathan however, doesn’t get the chance to react.

Seconds later, a wild-eyed Steve tumbles out of the house, slamming the door, and nearly collides with Jonathan on the step.

Jonathan doesn’t have long to take in his appearance, just seconds really, as Steve steadies himself and stands frozen in place in shock as though he had somehow forgotten that Jonathan was supposed to be coming over to his house today to watch a movie. His lip is swollen, Jonathan realizes, with a small trickle of blood slowly dripping down from the corner of his right nostril. A bright red mark was also slowly engulfing the flesh of his cheek.

Then, Steve brushes by him, letting out a snarl and a choked: “_Fuck_—let’s…let’s go.”

Jonathan spins on his feet and doesn’t have time to stop Steve from wrenching open the passenger side door to his car and violently slamming it shut. He winces, but follows obediently, slipping into the driver side and shoves his keys into the ignition, the car slowly sputtering to life. He thinks he should say something—_anything—_but when he turns to look at Steve, he’s breathing heavily with his fingers clenched into tightly coiled fists, his knuckles skim-milk white and resting tightly on his thighs.

“Steve—,” he tries, but Steve cuts him off with a furious:

“Just drive, Byers. _Anywhere._” The _away from here _is left unsaid.

Jonathan just nods, and in kindness he turns on the radio, cranking it as loud as it can go so that neither can hear Steve’s harsh exhales. Then, he shifts the car into reverse and pulls out of the driveway, leaving the Harrington household behind in a mess of churned gravel and clouds of dust.

Some of the gravel might have the hit the white Mercedes, he thinks.

But as he speeds down the boulevard, steering his old beater towards an aimless destination, he finds that he really doesn’t care.

\---

Mindlessly, he finds himself driving them towards the junkyard. He used to go there a lot when he was younger. When his dad was still living at home. Sometimes he'd break stuff. Throw rocks at car windows and take sticks and hit them against the hoods. Even now, he could probably point out which dents in the cars were made by him. Other times he'd just sit there, his skin vibrating with a hot anger that only the emptiness of a grassy field littered with rusty pieces of scrap could absolve. Honestly, Jonathan isn't sure what Steve needs right now, but he thinks he might find it here.

It’s a silent ride with no speaking, no secretive side-eyed glances, just nothing. The radio is blaring in an almost painfully loud way, causing his speakers to crackle and fuzz at the volume, but Jonathan doesn’t dare to turn down them down. He just drives. He drives them as fast and as far away from the house as he can possibly manage, and he doesn’t stop until the grassy field littered with rusting, dilapidated car carcasses comes into view.

Then, abruptly, he shuts off the engine and exhales. His skin, he feels, is crawling with discomfort from all the memories of his youth spent smashing rocks into rusty metal, and even now he isn't sure if this place was far enough away for Steve.

Then, unthinkingly, he pulls the keys out of the ignition and the radio snaps off, overwhelming both of them with a deadening, awful silence. He considers turning the car back on, but it’s too late, and Jonathan feels all the uncomfortable emotions he had been wrangling with in the pit of his stomach become hard, like a hot, painful ball of molten lead.

He knows he should say something. He tried to earlier, he really did, but he also knows how hard this is. How difficult and embarrassing and tiring this is. Dealing with that kind of family...situation. It was indescribably exhausting. Next to him, Steve is still breathing heavy, his breaths more of a seething hiss than anything else, and vaguely Jonathan recognizes that this isn’t the first time that something like this has happened.

This sort of anger doesn’t come until later. Until many times later. Until you’re almost at your breaking point.

Steve's dad, Jonathan realizes, is a really shitty person.

Instead, he dares to risk a glance—just a small one—but all it does is serve to make things worse. The moment Steve becomes aware that Jonathan is watching him, perhaps waiting for an explanation, he breaks. Jonathan watches with a saddening intimacy as Steve leans forward and heavily slaps his palms against the dashboard, letting out a repetitive string of: “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck!”_

And still, Jonathan doesn’t say anything. He just blinks and turns away, feeling his chest pull tight, his tongue sandpaper dry, because he knows better than anyone that it doesn’t matter. Nothing he can say right now will make any of this any better. Nothing. Instead, he lets them sit in silence, and they sit, and they sit, and when after an unchecked amount of time Jonathan hears Steve’s breathing slow to a quiet exhale, no longer whistling through the clench of his teeth, it’s only then does he dare to look at him again.

Silent tears are running down his face, a poor mask to his frustrations and the obtrusively bright red flesh of his cheek and thin smear of blood that had dribbled from his nose to the swollen curve of his lip. His left leg is also shaking again. That same, familiar shake that Jonathan had noticed half a dozen times by now over the course of the last few weeks and had never had the courage to ask about.

Only this time, Jonathan just stares at it—at his shaking leg—and for the first time ever, Steve doesn’t try to hide it. Because—well. There isn’t really any point anymore. Jonathan knows. Instead, he meets Jonathan's gaze and simply nods, taking a deep, deep breath.

Jonathan nods in return—a simple act of recognition—and twists the key in the ignition, the car jumping back to life. Steve seemed...calmer now. Not better, but calmer.

“Steve?” he tries again, this time quieter than before.

The worst of it might have been over, but there's something that Steve needs to know, Jonathan thinks. About families and broken promises and love that hurts. Love isn’t supposed to hurt. He wants Steve to know this. Steve _needs_ to know this.

Steve, slumped in the seat and staring vacantly out the windshield, doesn’t seem to hear him though. Like he was lost, or adrift elsewhere, maybe out behind the edge of the field in the thick of the woods, but his mind was definitely not _here._

And when the silence between them grows again, intermingling with the slow descent of the setting sun, it's only then does Steve speak.

“…thanks, Jonathan,” the other boy finally murmurs, breaking their fragile silence. Jonathan turns to look at him. He’s still staring straight ahead, right out the bug splattered pane of the cracked car window, his eyes blurry and unfocused. “For…not saying anything.”

And Jonathan gets it. He really does. He gets why Steve was lonely now. And why he always tried so hard to have everyone like him. Why he rarely spoke his mind and slipped into cloying smiles that kept his tongue firmly locked away, speaking only words that he thought others wanted to hear.

It was a defense mechanism—one that Jonathan was intimately aware of—because it was always easier to not rock the boat than it was to risk conflict. Especially around those who you wanted desperately to like you.

Jonathan thinks to his dad, and how after nearly a decade of trying, it was a strategy that never worked. His dad was still a mean drunk, a fucking deadbeat husband, and it didn’t matter how many times Jonathan tried to hold his tongue, because he always ended up on the recieving end of his fist.

"I really mean it," Steve adds quietly. "Thanks."

For not judging him, Jonathan thinks. Or pushing and prying in the way that Nancy always did. For staying silent like Steve did that night of his graduation when he told him he was gay and not convoluting an already messy situation with meaningless placations. For just…understanding.

“I get it,” Jonathan tells him at long last. “Lonnie…well. You know.”

It's the only thing he can really offer.

He lapses into silence. The whole goddamn town knew what Lonnie did to him. Then, wordlessly, Jonathan shifted the car back into gear.

From the corner of his eye, he can see Steve nodding, murmuring a quiet hum of affirmation. His leg, Jonathan notices, is still shaking, violently so.

Jonathan frowns.

He doesn’t know why he does it (or rather, he does know. He knows why. _He knows._) Without really thinking, he reaches over and sets his hand on the cusp of Steve’s knee, fingers softly gripping it.

_It’ll be okay, _he wants to tell him. Things will be _fine. _ But speaking those words would be nothing short of a betrayal, because he knows that they’re lies. Rather, what he really wants to tell him is that no, it's _not_ okay! That his dad is an asshole and Steve shouldn't have to deal with shit like this and that—well.

He guesses Steve already knows this. The bruise on his lip proves that he does.

His hand however, is still pressed gently against Steve's knee, still gently shaking, and briefly, Jonathan thinks that maybe he’s made a mistake. That maybe he shouldn’t have touched him. That maybe it was just better to let things continue to pass between them in silence, with purposeful ignorance of all those strange, barely recognizable moments where Steve wasn’t really Steve. The fake smiles. The overly loud laughs. And the slips in which he mentioned how he didn’t really get along with his dad. The shaking.

Because Jonathan gets it now. He really does, he thinks. Maybe. And it takes all the courage in the world to look at him again, because he too is full of self-doubt and that same desire to just have things be _normal_—like yeah, wouldn't it be great if our dads weren't total assholes?—and when he does, Steve is no longer staring straight ahead into the reds of the sunset, but right at Jonathan, the lines of his body seized and enmeshed by a noticeable stiffness.

Jonathan swallows thickly—he has a choice to make—and he goes for it, gripping onto Steve’s knee harder, willing it to be still. Seconds pass, and then a few seconds more, and he thinks Steve might recoil and storm out of his car because he looks so mad and so angry and so utterly confused, like he just might hit him, but then he exhales, his anxiety melting into his touch. Steve closes his eyes and the shaking stops, as does the tightness in his shoulders. His whole body seems to collapse into the seat Jonathan just nods again—he gets it, he really does—and he presses his foot to the pedal of the accelerator.

They drive back into town, Jonathan’s hand resting on the cup of Steve’s knee the entire time. And by the time they hit the town limits, Steve is almost Steve again.

Jonathan slows down the car considerably once they approach the edge of the suburb and finds himself driving at an impossible crawl as they approach the boulevard that leads to the Harrington home.

As the street name comes into view, Steve’s leg starts shaking again. Jonathan's gaze drifts back Steve’s—he’s gone stiff again, staring aimlessly towards the flickering of the streetlights passing by in the dusk—and Jonathan presses down upon his knee harder, his fingers digging into the rough fabric of his jeans. Despite Steve’s sudden rigidity, the shaking in his leg doesn’t stop and Jonathan’s chest pulls tight. It was the same tightness where he finds it hard to breath, where his lungs turn into cardboard and he feels weird and strange and different, and it’s always with Steve and—

Jonathan doesn’t think, he just grabs onto Steve's hand and holds on tight.

It curls almost instantly into his own, his fingers eager and trembling.

Steve’s fingers, Jonathan thinks, are slightly longer than his own, and almost too wide, but it doesn’t feel wrong when Steve squeezes his hand against his own, like despite the differences they somehow fit, and Jonathan squeezes back.

Steve doesn’t let go of his hand until they reach the end of his driveway. Jonathan considers driving in, but Steve utters an abrupt: “_no_, stop—,” and Jonathan takes this as a sign to pull the car to the side of the road a few houses down.

“I’m going to go in through my window above the garage,” he tells Jonathan quietly, eyes distantly tracing the shadows of his house.

Then, slowly, he disentangles his fingers from Jonathan’s and lets out another breathy exhale.

“Steve—,” Jonathan says, but Steve cuts him off.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then?” he asks suddenly. In the purple light of dimming summer skies, Steve’s face looks fractured. The lines are all wrong and the angles all shattered. It doesn’t help that his right cheek is puffy and swollen, with the faint bloom of fading red leaking into his lip.

Jonathan simply nods.

“I—,” he tries. But he doesn’t know how to say it anymore. Not without breaking Steve's gratitude. Of just listening. And not saying anything at all. Even if he knows it's wrong.

Because love isn’t supposed to hurt. _Family_ isn’t supposed to hurt. He learned this lesson the hard way. His eyes flit nervously towards Steve’s house, then back to Steve. Steve’s teeth, he notices, are pulling anxiously at his lower lip. And without Jonathan’s hand to anchor him, his leg had returned to its habitual aimless vibrating in the cars wide-set bucket seats.

He decides to say something anyways.

“You can come to me anytime,” Jonathan finally decides upon. “I get it,” he repeats firmly, trying to meet Steve’s gaze. “I _know_.”

Steve hums again in a distant acknowledgement, but his eyes are distant, still fixated on his house beyond the trees, and Jonathan fidgets. He gets it, he really does, but he’s not sure Steve does. And he _needs _to understand.

Steve pulls the handle to the door on his side of the car and nods, murmuring a quiet, “Yeah…sure.” His leg, Jonathan notes, was still shaking.

“Hey, Steve—,” he says suddenly. Steve pauses, twisting in his seat just a fraction of an inch, and before he can protest Jonathan pulls him into a sudden, tight embrace. “I mean it,” he says thickly into the collar of his shirt.

Steve, he thinks, smells like the type of cologne he’ll never be able to afford, like chlorine from the type of people who live in the same stretch of the woods he does, but have pools and higher tax brackets from houses that were unnecessarily big. The same, but different. All separated by meaningless inconsequential bullshit and tied together by the same shitty circumstances that can happen to any person, like having a shit dad, regardless of whether you were rich or poor. “I get it. Come to me whenever.”

He pulls back, far too soon, and Steve is blinking at him, likely from the unexpected contact. Then, just for a second, Steve smiles at him. A real smile. A flash of his former self, really.

“I owe you a movie night,” he says softly. It’s the quietest he’s ever heard Steve speak. No posturing. No false bravado. No fakeness ringing back thick with its near undetectable timbre. “Tomorrow. I’ll call you.” Then, Steve is exiting his car, hands shoved deep into the depths of his pocket as he disappears across the length of his yard towards the trellis on the far side of the garage.

And then, that feeling is back again, that same feeling from that day in the movie theatre lobby, the one where Jonathan felt different.

He blinks. And suddenly, very staggeringly, he knows what that feeling is.

Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two updates in one week? I'm on fire! (Actually, just not swamped with work, so hey...sad boys writing time). Anyways. Steve's got some home life issues and Jonathan gets it and like, hey Steve, stop being so sad? Or at least be sad together with Jonathan hahaha... lemme know your thoughts! <3


	6. Chapter 6

Steve calls him the next day like promised, a quick phone call in the early morning asking if it would be cool to pick up him around noon. His voice is surprisingly _normal_—nothing at all like it had been like last night—and Jonathan agrees. He vaguely wonders if it’s okay to even be going back to the Harrington’s house, or if maybe Steve’s dad was already gone again, but Jonathan doesn’t ask and Steve’s voice—casual with a self-imposed cool—doesn’t bother to explain.

Instead, Jonathan lets the unspoken elephant in the room linger and grow until Steve’s car pulls into the driveway at quarter past twelve.

“Gimme a sec,” he says to Steve in passing, skipping down the steps on the porch and waving him his keys. “Movies’ still in my car.”

Steve’s brows knit together tightly for a brief second before he shakes his head, and waves Jonathan over, signalling for him to come close.

“_Actually_,” Steve starts off. “Uh…my dad’s still home. Will be till Wednesday, apparently. So I was thinking we could go for a drive.” He winces, like he’s expecting Jonathan to be disappointed by his announcement, like as if somehow the only reason Jonathan chose to hang out with him was for his house. “And get high,” he then adds, the pause between his words decidedly disjointedly.

In all honesty, there were way worse things that Steve could have suggested and Jonathan almost laughs.

“I…" he says, about to apologize, but stops himself. "Yeah. That’s fine,” he nods, opening the passenger side door. Steve grins like an easily excitable puppy dog, any previous trepidation vanishing as he slips into the car next to him and turns over the engine.

"Where's Robin?" Jonathan then dares to ask, her absence instantly noticeable.

"Work," Steve shrugs.

Jonathan accepts Steve's answer without question and doesn’t bother to ask where exactly Steve is driving them. Instead he's happy to listen to the quiet hum of the music Steve had popped into the cassette player—thankfully, it’s not _Journey _again, but rather some pseudo pop-rock band with vague synthetic undertones that cut through the slippery chords of a laid back guitar riff.

“You listen to _The Cars_?” Jonathan asks in surprise, instantly recognizing the strange, wavy vocals of Ric Ocasek.

Steve nods, but doesn’t take his eyes off the road.

“Their first album? I probably ruined the needle on my cousin’s record player,” he admits, chuckling lightly. “Why—you don’t like them?”

Jonathan shakes his head.

“No, I do. _A lot_, actually. I just didn’t think…”

Steve raises a speculative brow, shooting him a quick glance.

“Think what? That someone like _me _would like them?”

It’s an unbarbed throwback to their previous poolside conversation, and Jonathan finds himself laughing.

“Yeah,” he chuckles softly. “You’re more a Rick Springfield sort of guy,” he smirks, remembering that morning in Steve’s bed where he had been awoken by his awful, off key singing.

“You’re right,” Steve simply smiles. “But _The Cars _are just…_cool_, you know? I think I was like. Thirteen when I first heard them and just…wow. They were so different than anything else I had ever heard on the radio. Mind you, they’re no Neil Diamond, but—,”

“—_Neil Diamond?_” Jonathan cuts him off, his voice incredulous.

Jonathan had almost been convinced that Steve’s tastes in music weren’t totally shit when he had to go ahead and mention _that. _

“Hey!” Steve says defensively. “His 1972 live recording at the Greek Theater? ‘_Hot August Night’? _Have you ever _listened _to it?”

“No,” Jonathan tells him bluntly, and nor did he want to. Neil Diamond was someone his _mom _listened to. And his mom listened to Kenny Loggins.

Steve sends him a quick look again, his brows furrowed and lips drawn tight. Then, as he steers the car in a smooth turn down an old dirt road, he firmly declares: “We’re listening to it. You have to. It’s one of my favorite albums, _ever_, and you need to hear it. In the glove box,” he directs with the wave of his hand. “It should be there.”

On command, Jonathan reluctantly fiddles with the latch to the glove box, and comes across an untidy pile of cassette tapes tossed amongst Steve’s insurance papers. He flicks through them—there’s Billy Idol, The Romantics, and of course, Journey—but finally, he finds a scuffed up copy of the album in question, ‘Hot August Night’. It was in a thick, double high plastic case, with two cassettes versus the normal single ones that tapes were normally issued in. A picture of the man in question was on the cover, his hair wildly voluminous and almost impossibly large. It sort of looked like Steve’s, Jonathan thought errantly. Only longer. And maybe less styled. But very, _very _similar.

Jonathan decides that he likes Steve’s better.

As he grabs the cassette, closing the glove box, he looks up. The road they had turned down onto was also eerily familiar. In fact, it was the same road Jonathan had driven them down yesterday—all dirt tire tracks and encroaching, paint scratching brush—and he realizes that Steve is taking them to the junkyard.

Jonathan blinks.

Why? Why were they going back here? But he doesn’t have time to think about that or even ask, as the car pulls to a slow stop near one of the old buses. Steve rolls down the front windows of the car before shutting off the engine. Then, he twists the key backwards in the ignition, letting the stereo run off of the battery.

“Here,” he says, pushing out his hand. Jonathan drops the tape into his waiting fingers, and Steve fiddles with the cassette player, popping out the self-titled _The Cars_ album, and pushing in the first of the two Neil Diamond tapes. Then, after a few seconds of silence, the tape whirls to life, and Jonathan is greeted by the slow swelling of strings from an orchestra. This was…

He frowns slightly. _Okay_—this was _not _what he had been expecting.

If Steve seems phased by his confused look, he pays him no heed and instead pops open ashtray in the cars center console. Inside, secured within a slightly crumpled cigarette pack, was a joint. He pulls it out, digs around in his pants pocket for a lighter, and then hands the joint to Jonathan.

Wordlessly, Jonathan accepts it, playing with the paper cylinder between his fingers for a few second before reaching out for Steve’s lighter. He lights it, inhales deeply, exhales, and then inhales again. Then, as he blows the smoke out the window, he hands off the joint to Steve.

Steve replicates Jonathan’s actions, coughing slightly, and passes it back.

The music, Jonathan notes, was slowly building. It was getting louder and louder, and then there was the jarring notes of an organ, strange and near ethereal, followed by the abrupt but catchy rhythmic strumming of an electric guitar. Seconds later, a booming drum beat kicked in. It shouldn’t have sounded as good as it did—it was an eclectic combination of whining organs, layered violins, coupled with the crackly hum of a steadily strummed guitar, all held together by the brassy crash of numerous high hat strikes—but Jonathan wasn’t even high yet and he had to admit that the opening few minutes of the album were entrancing.

“This is…” Jonathan starts off. He takes another pull off the joint and hands it back to Steve. Then, the vocals kicked in to the rising crescendo of the electric orchestra and Jonathan felt it. That really nice feeling. Of hearing something that was indescribably catchy, that _thing _that clicked in your brain whenever you heard something that you really, _really _liked.

“Oh. _Wow_,” was all he could manage, and shit, he might have been high.

“_Right?” _Steve gushes enthusiastically. “So, okay I know, man, I know, Neil Diamond—super lame and like. The sort of stuff you hear playing on the sound system at the grocery store. But _this _album,” Steve smiles, and he laughs, stifling a giggle and trying to sound serious. “Man. It’s different. Like his energy? The way he sings the songs? _Totally _different from all his other stuff.”

And Jonathan just nods, because Steve’s right, he really is—and the music feels nice and it feels right, and he’s surprised because he’s heard some of these songs before, studio recordings if he had to hazard a guess—but the way that they were being sung on this album, during the live performance, with the live orchestra? It was good. Really _good_.

Then, Jonathan starts to laugh.

“Shit,” he giggles, nearly choking. “I’m listening to Neil fucking Diamond and liking it.”

Across from him Steve lets out a loud snort which dissolves into a wheezing laughter, and really it’s deserved because _holy shit, _he liked Neil Diamond.

Then, unannounced, Steve cranks the volume on his cars’ stereo and swings open his door.

“Wanna throw rocks at cars?” he asks, grinning widely, still struggling to contain his laughter.

Jonathan just nods, exiting alongside Steve, and the pair walk towards an old fire pit burnt into the grass—probably left by some other teenagers who spent their evening partying in the field. He picks up one of the many rocks that were assembled in a circle to make a ring and rolls it over in his hand.

“I used to do this all the time when I was younger,” Jonathan readily admits, and he flings the rock at the nearest vehicle—an old, dented Buick. It collides with the windshield, creating a long, streaking crack.

Next to him, Steve picks up a stone and tosses it up and down in his hand.

“I figured as much,” Steve says—and he’s doing it again: trying to be serious despite being higher than a kite. He fails and starts to snicker uncontrollably before turning and swiftly flinging the small rock towards the same car. Unlike Jonathan’s, the rock bounces off the windshield and falls into the grass next to the flat passenger-side tire. Steve frowns slightly, like he’s disappointed it didn’t do any damage and reaches for another rock. “It didn’t take much to figure out why you brought me to the junkyard yesterday. So...thanks for that.”

And, _ah_—there it is. The acknowledgement of what had occurred between them. So Steve wasn't going to let sleeping dogs lie.

In the background to what should have been an otherwise fairly serious conversation, the rising crescendo to the introduction of the song, _Cherry, Cherry, _had reached its peak, blaring out loudly from the open windows to Steve’s BMW.

Next to him, Steve is waiting, carefully and cautiously, and Jonathan’s brain feels like it’s on fire as he contemplates on what he should say.

“My dad was," he eventually settles upon. "—_is_,” he then corrects. “A giant asshole." He picks up another rock and launches it far in a large, arching throw. It clunks off the roof of a bus with a loud, metallic thud.

Neil Diamond's voice swells into the emptiness of the breezy field, declaring loudly about the love of his life.

“_Man_, mine too,” Steve tells him with a stupidly inappropriate smile. He drops the rock in his hand, and from the fire pit, he grabs the neck of a broken beer bottle and flings it towards the rusted shell of a Ford Pinto. It shatters into a million little pieces, the brown glass transforming into a blooming explosion of white, tiny specks. "We should form a club," Steve then laughs. "The Drunk Dickhead Dad's Club."

And Jonathan just laughs, even though Steve's lip is still sort of swollen, still slightly bruised, and Steve laughs with him.

And all around them is just nothingness. Just dead grass and dead cars and half fallen trees and an empty summer sky with a sun that felt far too hot for only July. Boys with fathers who had taught their sons to be excellent liars. Feigning normalcy—or at least, what they thought normal should be—came second nature to them. But they weren’t faking it now, and next to Jonathan, Steve sing-shouts along with the music at the top of his lungs: "Y’ain’t go no riiiiight, no, no you don’t—my, my!—_ahh_, to be so exciting!"—he picks up another stone and launches it into the air—"Won’t need bright liiiiight, no, no we won’t—my, _my_!—gonna make our own lightning!"

The rock strikes the Buicks’ window and it shatters instantly, the glass pieces falling into the old, rotting interior.

“Score!” Steve shouts wildly, raising his arms in victory.

And all Jonathan could think was that this was...nice. Just nice. Even with the weirdness of talking about their dads. Even with Steve’s awful singing.

Because Steve still can't sing, even if he tries. His singing is terrible, always has been, Jonathan thinks. But he's smiling, and so is Steve, stupidly so, and when he suddenly pulls on his sleeve, pointing towards the wedged open folding door of the old bus, Jonathan follows.

\---

“I almost died in this bus,” Steve casually announces as they slip down the aisle. The interior of the old bus was dimly lit and smelled strongly of mold and rust with just a hint of earthiness, the floor scattered with the decaying remnants of old leaves. And Jonathan, well—he doesn’t know what’s worse—Steve’s odd indifference to the fact that he just announced he almost died, or the smell.

It wouldn't be the first time, he supposes. Steve almost dying that is. Jonathan too had had his brushes with death over the years, but he wasn't sure he had come to terms with them all in the same easy manner Steve had.

Or maybe, Steve was just high.

“Yeah?” is all Jonathan can think to say. He watches as Steve pulls ahead, reaching the back of the bus where a long bench seat encompasses the entirety of the back aisle. Then, Steve flops down in the very middle of it, stretching both arms out along the backside. Jonathan hesitates momentarily, but Steve just grins and pats the space on the seat next to him, beckoning for him to sit down.

“Two years ago,” Steve tells him as Jonathan settles himself next to Steve. “Came out here with Dustin, looking for that demon-dog thing of his.”

“Demodog,” Jonathan corrects gently.

Steve waves him off, flopping his head back against the seat.

“Well whatever that _thing_ was,” Steve says through a lazy grin. “We tried to kill it. And, uh...it brought back friends. So yeah. Almost died. Me, Dustin, Lucas, and Max. And I just remember thinking, _wow,_ how stupid could I be to bring a bunch of kids out here to do this with me?”

It isn’t very funny, not in the least, but Jonathan finds himself chuckling with a derisive sounding laugh. Probably from the weed, he thinks. Like—_uh,_ _yeah, Steve, that was pretty dumb. _He doesn’t mean to sound unkind, but it just sort of slips out, and it elicits a reaction from Steve, who cranes his head to the left, gaze watching him curiously. Then, despite his body somehow having morphed into a lazy, seat-hugging liquid, Steve manages to raise a singular eyebrow at him challengingly.

“_What?_ Like you never had a monster-hunting plan go badly?” Steve asks. “If I remember correctly, you set your whole goddamn hallway on fire!”

“That was part of the plan!” Jonathan shoots back, feeling an edge of laughter work it’s way back into his voice. “Nancy’s plan,” he amends suddenly. “And at least it worked,” he adds.

“Only because I came back,” Steve touts with an air of cockiness. “Saved _both_ your asses.”

Jonathan snorts, rolling his eyes.

“Sure,” he grins—and he’s still ten feet high in the sky, his mind up amongst the clouds and his body feeling lighter than a feather—“my hero, Steve Harrington.”

“You’re damn straight!” Steve puffs.

Jonathan resists the urge to roll his eyes.

"Well, we both know that—," and oh.

_Oh._

He had looked over, just for a second, and he had noticed Steve’s fingers playing (once again) with an errant thread on the collar of his jacket. Just idly. Almost close enough to be touching the hairs on the back of his neck. Almost like the time they had been sitting together, poolside. Involuntarily, Jonathan feels himself shiver.

And it’s stupid, he thinks, really stupid that something so small and inconsequential could make him feel this way—because _right, _he still hasn’t fully disgested the fact that he thinks he might has a _crush_ on Steve Harrington—might have had one for a while now, actually—but it’s not like it even really matters, because he promised himself that he can’t and _won’t_ mention it, ever. He promised himself, in that moment of dawning panic the night before, that he wouldn’t ruin this. Whatever _this_ was.

Then, Steve’s arm drops, taking his hand with him, and Jonathan feels his stomach dip, an odd and altogether painful feeling of disappointment spreading through his limbs. Next to him, Steve seems unaware he’d even stopped talking, and Jonathan watches as he squeezes his eyes shut, slumping into the seat even deeper than Jonathan thought humanly possible.

“_Maaaaaan_,” Steve announces in more of a whine than anything else. “I am _so _high right now. I wish we had food.”

Steve Harrington, ladies and gentlemen, his stupid, decidedly childish, awful, dumb crush.

“I have a stick of gum in my pocket?” Jonathan suggests, fishing into his jacket and pulling out the last stick of a foil wrapped doublemint stick of Wrigley's.

And Steve just looks at him, very seriously and very speculatively— judgmentally almost— with his lips drawn into a thin, unimpressed line. Gum, apparently, Jonathan thinks, wasn’t going to cut it.

“We’ll split it,” Steve then says, in the utmost sober, serious sounding voice of all time. He grabs at the gum in a comically desperate sort of way, tearing off the foil wrapper and biting it in half.

_I won’t ruin this_, a voice in Jonathan’s head whispers.

And then, both of them burst into laughter, because _jesus_ here they were, high in a rusty old bus where Steve almost died, starving, and the only thing they had to eat between them was a shitty stick of chewing gum.

\---

He’s almost okay again by the time he and Steve make the short drive back towards town. Neil Diamond is still playing—they’ve moved onto the second cassette, which Jonathan discovers contains songs that are a lot more mellow than the ones on the first tape. Steve occasionally sings along, fingers thrumming against the curve of the steerwheel. He feels sleepy now, Jonathan thinks. Like he’s overdue for a long, long nap. And Steve’s muted, quiet singing is lulling him asleep. His singing sounds better, almost—less loud and off key and more of a warm murmur and Jonathan finds that he doesn’t really mind it.

As they pull into his driveway, Jonathan opens his eyes, startled by the abrupt lack of movement. The music, he realizes has stopped, so has Steve’s singing. Shit. He must have fallen asleep.

Jonathan yawns, sitting up straight in his seat and undoes his belt.

“Thanks,” he says through squinty, sleepy eyes. “Sorry...that weed really knocked me out there for a minute,” he offers in a way of an apology.

Steve just nods, like he understands, and Jonathan flashes him a small apologetic smile, opening the door.

“Hey, Jonathan, wait—,” Steve says suddenly. Jonathan pulls back and looks to Steve. He looks equally sleepy, if not more so, but it fails to make him look relaxed. Instead, he just looks worried. Burned out. Tired. Inadvertently, Jonathan’s eyes are drawn to Steve's legs—were they shaking?— but instead he finds his left hand, half hidden by the steering wheel, fidgeting nervously on the ledge of the door. Jonathan isn’t sure what this means, and he’s suddenly struck by the thought of, _oh, right_—Steve has to go home now. But before he can offer to see if he wants to come inside for a bit, Steve speaks again.

“So remember when I said we should do something before you guys leave this summer? The one last hurrah?”

Sleepy-eyed and drowsy, Jonathan nods.

“Yeah...you mentioned it a few weeks ago, right?” Jonathan says, his mind fuzzy and still feeling slightly out of sorts. “That day we were really hungover.”

Steve’s lips pull into a half smile, and he nods at the distant memory.

“So I have this cabin,” he then tells him slowly. “Well actually, it’s my parents’ cabin. It’s a few hours north of here on Lake Wasaga. I think we should all go—it’d be fun.”

The cogs in Jonathan’s brain struggle to turn at full speed and he repeats in his head what Steve had just said twice over before he blinks, letting out a slow _oh. _

A cabin.

Up the interstate.

We should all go.

We.

His mind pulls back to conversation he and Steve had had that morning after Benny’s, driving home in Steve’s car. Of monster hunters, and Robin, and of course, Nancy. And then his brain soars between the memories of the weeks between then and now, and how things with Nancy were still weird. How he hasn’t really seen her since promising to remain friends. How uncomfortable their actions towards each other had been during that graduation party at Sammy Clearwater’s house, and her absolute albeit carefully hidden anger that morning in the diner.

He felt bad. He really did.

“That sounds...great, Steve,” Jonathan finally settles on, but before Steve can light up, he adds: “But me and Nancy...things have been weird with us. I don’t think she’d want to go if I was there.”

He felt bad, but Jonathan would be the first to admit that he didn't know how to fix it. The things with Nancy.

But it seemed that maybe, Steve did.

“Oh, no, _no_—it’s totally fine!” Steve quickly tells him with a wave of his hands. “I talked to her this morning already and...yeah. She said it’d be good for us. All of us. She was into it. Really.”

And Jonathan blinks, letting out another confused: “Oh.”

He hadn't expected that.

“Robin’s gonna see if she can come too,” Steve adds. “If she can convince Keith to let both of us have the time off together.”

But Jonathan doesn’t care about Robin coming or not—not in a mean way; he liked Robin, he really did—it was just that right now it was the thought of Nancy that was setting his brain on fire. Nancy, Nancy, Nancy. And how maybe, it just might be good for them to try and be actual friends again. For real. With none of the placating bullshit. They could be friends right? It wasn’t like he hated her. He just…

Well. That part had already been said.

Slowly, Jonathan nods.

“Uh, okay then, sure,” he smiles cautiously. Steve's face breaks into one of his glowing, luminous smiles, and this one, Jonathan thinks, is real. “When?”

“Next weekend? Nancy’s getting back from Toledo on the Friday, so she said she’d drive up on the Saturday. We could head out Friday morning?"

He almost doesn't hear half what Steve says, his brain having froze half way through Steve's explanation.

“Nancy’s...in Toledo?” he asks, feeling a strange sense of confusion wash over him. It’s probably not the thing he should be focusing on. Definitely not. But if his question seems odd, Steve doesn’t seem to mind.

“Going to be,” Steve hums. “Leaving on Tuesday. Some big family reunion.”

Unexpectedly, Jonathan feels himself deflate, and recognizes the exhausting feeling sinking in his gut as disappointment. It just felt..._weird_ that he hadn’t known that about her. Normally, he thinks, Nancy would have told him everything. So this cabin trip...maybe it really wouldn't be so bad for them.

“So you’ll come?” Steve prods, and _shit_—Jonathan realizes he still hasn’t said anything.

“Um...I’ll have to check with work,” he says, and his stomach dips again—to bills and tuition costs and responsibilities—but he shoves all the worry aside and swallows it down. “And my mom. But it shouldn't be a problem.”

“Work better let you go,” Steve says flatly. “Your mom too. Or I’ll be forced to kidnap you.”

And with the last lingering remains of the fuzzy mid-afternoon high, Jonathan laughs. And Steve? Steve laughs with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe take a quick, loud listen to the 1972 live version of 'Cherry, Cherry' by Neil Diamond off his 'Hot August Night' album. I expect you to blare it as loud as humanly possible and report back with your findings ;)


	7. Chapter 7

The rest of the week passes by quickly in a blur of work, family, and an appointment he made at the bank (he takes out a loan for school and feels sick signing the paperwork, but at least this way he knows he can leave his savings to his mother so she can pay the bills while he’s away). And then of course, there’s Steve.

By Wednesday he seems considerably less heavy as a person and has brightened noticeably with the knowledge that his dad was leaving again for some real estate conference in Sonoma. With an undeterred wryness, Steve tells Jonathan that his dad will be gone for close to two weeks this time, and that if he’s lucky, his old man might even turn his trip of two weeks into three.

“I have a grandmother who lives in Reno now,” Steve tells him one afternoon, leaning against the hood of his car outside the theatre. “She moved into one of those ritzy upscale retirement communities after my grandfather died. My dad likes to pretend that he spends time ‘visiting’ her whenever he goes out west,”—his fingers move to make visible air quotations as Steve rolls his eyes—“but really, he’s probably just fucking around with some cocktail waitress at one of those crappy, second rate casinos.”

It’s the most Jonathan has ever heard Steve talk about his dad, and the way he speaks—with a casual air of indifference, laced with a noticeably abrasive tone of distaste—doesn’t paint a pretty picture of Steve’s home life. He supposes Steve feels more comfortable talking about it now though, as if their collective experience of having shitty, awful dads somehow makes that okay.

“And your mom?” Jonathan dares to asks, although he isn’t quite sure if he really should. Steve had rarely mentioned his mother, and Jonathan was slowly realizing he had never met—or even seen—her, either. Rather, she was like a ghost—a phantom-like apparition who appeared only in Stepford-esque family photos that hung on the walls of the home’s hallways.

“Lately, it’s been retreats,” Steve says bluntly, and his teeth pull at his lower lip, his eyes shifting quietly away. Then, he rolls his shoulders back and he lets out a big, big sigh, as though an explanation about her was long overdue.

“She’s a member of the Neighbourhood Homeowners Association,” he begins. “Plus, she volunteers down at the city library doing fundraising drives. Last spring it was with the community soup kitchen. Oh, and she’s a member of the board of trustees for the local school district. So in the summer, she likes to take a break and spends time at these weird women conventions where they drink lots of wine, spend time getting sun tans, and talk about ‘manifested self-empowerment’. You know…weird shit like that.” The last part he spits out, like as if the words had left a particularly bad taste in his mouth.

“She sounds…busy,” is all Jonathan can offer him, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. Despite all the good things that Steve mentions his mother does, there’s an undercurrent of sadness to his voice, as though her apparent moral, neighborly integrity didn’t quite match up with her real intentions.

“Yeah,” Steve says, fidgeting ever so slightly. He takes a long sip of his coke from the movie theatre cup Jonathan had grabbed for him when he showed up on his break and sets it down empty on the roof of the car. “She does a lot. All the time. Anything really, just to stay out of the house.”

And Jonathan just nods, the squirming feeling of discomfort—of the secret lives of the Harrington’s exposed—writhing in his gut.

“And does she like it?” he says, pushing himself for the courage to ask.

Steve makes a quiet hum through the click of his teeth, and if Jonathan didn’t know him better, he would have thought him to be annoyed.

“She likes not having to be around my dad,” Steve then says plainly, and Jonathan watches as he shakes his head, sighing breathily as he pushes his hip off from the edge of the car. He _was_ annoyed—just not at Jonathan. “It’s better this way,” he then adds, trying for a smile, but he looks remarkably off-putting and altogether miserable.

Jonathan, not for a lack of trying, doesn’t know what to say—all of it just seemed so unbelievable. The Harrington’s, with their picture perfect house and fancy cars and charmingly shot family photos from the studio photo at _Sears_ were simply just...less than. Less than perfect. Less than normal. Less than okay. And Steve was stuck right in the middle of it. Like some sort of sad, teenage decoration, or a forgotten piece of furniture, Steve simply seemed to exist in a weird, fractured family space as the sole fixture in the house that acted as the intermediate connection between his parents separate lives.

The thought of Steve living alone, not really ever knowing if and when his parents would be there struck him as incredibly sad. Robin's extended stays at the house suddenly made a lot more sense.

“At least your dads leaving tomorrow?” Jonathan then offers kindly—it's honestly the least pitying thing he can say at the moment—and Steve’s smile lightens as he nods, murmuring an upbeat: “Yeah, thank_ god_ for that.”

\---

By Friday morning, Jonathan learns from Steve that Robin wasn’t able to finagle the entire weekend off, and with an output frown, he announces that Keith wants her to work the Friday night shift. Meaning—and Steve says this part like he’s really mad, furious almost—that she’ll have to drive up to the cabin with Nancy on Saturday instead.

“This sucks,” Steve announces, helping Jonathan pack his bag into the trunk of his car. “Keith’s such a dick sometimes. Robin even told him it was a date sort of thing—like as a couple—and even then, he still said ‘no’.”

Jonathan blinks, frowning, and he feels the pit of his stomach flip.

“I thought you and Robin_ weren’t_ dating."

Steve shakes his head, slamming the trunk shut and grabs the last of Jonathan’s things—his camera bag—and carefully sets it in the backseat.

“We’re not. Never will. But Keith seems to think we are, and Robin figured we might as well try and use that to our advantage.”

“And it didn’t work,” Jonathan says.

“It didn’t,” Steve confirms, pressing his lips thin. “Man—what’s the point of everyone thinking you’re dating if you can’t even get time off work together!?” Steve exclaims loudly.

The twisting in Jonathan’s guts subsides and he lets out a breathy laugh.

“_Uh_…there’s a two-for-one pizza special on Valentine’s Day for couples at Pizza Hut every year?” he teases.

Steve’s lips press together even thinner and he stares at Jonathan with an inscrutable, withering stare. He’s about to open his mouth again in rebuttal when Jonathan’s mother decides to make a timely appearance on the stoop of the porch.

His mom, he thinks, appears anxious. Despite flashing the boys a small smile, her face appears weary, and in the curl of her fingers is an already half smoked cigarette. Her eyes too seem nervous, as though she wasn’t sure what to make of Jonathan’s weekend away, and her arm pulls tightly across the length of her housecoat. Jonathan just nods and answers her silent request to come up onto the porch to say his goodbyes.

Steve of course, is none the wiser as to what is to come.

“Hey, Mrs. Byers!” he calls from his spot near the car.

“Good morning, Steve,” she smiles, casting a warm glance across the driveway.

Up close, Jonathan realizes his mom is more anxious than he had originally taken her for. There’s a pull to her lip, casting doubt to her smile, and the puffs on her cigarette seem more frequent than usual.

Before she can begin, Jonathan tries his best to placate her.

“I’ll be fine, mom,” Jonathan tells her quietly, if not reassuringly and waits for the incoming embrace of affection. “Really.”

Expectantly, his mother places her two hands on his shoulders and looks him up and down, down and up, and then lets out another weary sigh.

“I don’t like that there’s no phone at the cabin,” she tells him, her voice thick with consternation. “And what happens if you get a flat tire? Does Steve know how to change a tire? Do you? I’m just—,”

“—_worried_,” Jonathan says through the slip of his own exhaustion. Guilt blooms quickly from the depths of his chest—he knows more than anyone how much his mother has been through and that her worry is more than deserved—and he acquiesces to her a small, encouraging nod. “It’s okay. We’ll be fine, I promise.”

In the browns of his mother’s eyes, he can see his reflection mirrored back, traced by the quiet pools of her own nervous energy. Then she too nods and pulls Jonathan into an embarrassingly full embrace.

“_Mom_,” he murmurs into the folds of her smoky smelling housecoat, feeling his cheeks grow warm. He can feel the lingering eyes of Steve by the car tracing scant glances towards the porch and his embarrassment grows. He rolls his shoulders in a silent request to be released and three seconds later she does so, fluttering back like a bird with her teeth biting at the soft flesh of her inside cheek.

“Sorry,” she smiles, her eyes crinkling. “I know, I_ know_—you’re too old for hugs. I just…want you to have fun. And to be safe.”

“Don’t worry Mrs. Byers!” Steve grins from his spot by the car. Jonathan turns and sees Steve, perched lazily against the hood, arms folded across the length of his chest. He had been watching them more than Jonathan originally thought, and Jonathan ducks his head low just in case. His cheeks still felt warm and it felt weird that Steve had just witnessed such an intimate moment between him and his mom. “I’ll make sure Jonathan gets home all in one piece," Steve beams.

Steve’s warmness—altogether almost too bright and unnerving—seems to be enough for Mrs. Byers, as if she suddenly just remembered that she all too often trusted Will in the hands of him and his BMW, and so she just nods, smoothing his hands across the fabric of her housecoat on curves of her hips.

“Of course you will, Steve,” she smiles back. “I trust you. _Both_ of you,” she says, turning to give Jonathan one final smothering, loving reminder.

Then, Jonathan slinks back towards the car, unsure of how he’s to spend the next three hours in a car next to Steve with the acute awareness that he just witnessed his mother man-handle him in full helicopter hovering mode. It’s not that he didn’t love her, but sometimes she was just too, too much.

Jonathan waves one final goodbye to his mom on the porch as Steve pulls out of the driveway. As he steers them towards the road that leads towards the interstate, Steve slips his shades down off the top of his head and pops out a sunny: “I like your mom. She’s nice.”

Jonathan feels himself flush full again with embarrassment and shoots Steve a curious glance, but thanks to the sunglasses he can’t see anything beyond his thick smile. Which might be, Jonathan thinks errantly, due to the fact that he had fucking _Journey_ popped into the cassette player again.

“We aren’t listening to this the entire time,” Jonathan states flatly, eying the tape player with a noticeable look of disgust and changing the subject all at the same time.

“_What_?” Steve almost seems offended. “_Journey _is _classic_ road trip music!”

“Classically _shit_,” Jonathan fires back.

Steve, even with his shades on, appears scandalized.

“You’re shit,” he shoots back hotly.

“Not as shitty as _Journey._”

He thinks Steve might just try and fire back another insult at him, or maybe even try and defend the merits of the band, but instead he just starts to laugh.

“If that’s the way you want it, Johnny-boy,” he simply grins.

Jonathan’s brows knit together tightly—he’s more than slightly confused—but the next song on the tape picks up and—_oh._

The next song the tape was exactly that: _Anyway You Want It._ Next to him, Steve just laughs, and just when Jonathan is about to suggest picking another tape, Steve cranks up the volume and begins to sing along with the song at the top of his lungs and—_oh god, _it was just as bad as before in the junkyard.

Steve sing-shouts the rest of the song, butchering most of the lyrics, and it’s only when Jonathan physically threatens to remove himself from the car going 60 mph down the freeway does Steve smile softly, popping out the cassette tape and putting in the _The Cars _album instead.

\---

By noon, Steve steers the car towards a sandy, gravel road that skirts outside the small town of Freemont and he explains rather abruptly that the cabin is actually an old hunt camp that his grandfather used to frequent before he passed away.

“I came here a lot as a kid, actually,” Steve smiles brightly, pushing up his shades. The surrounding trees of the forest had temporarily blocked out most of the sun on the old dirt road and had cast cool, breezy shadows across the length of the car. “Probably every summer for a week or two. Then my grandpa got sick and I stopped coming.”

“What about your parents?”

“It’s, _uh_...not to their taste,” Steve laughs and although subtle, Jonathan can detect a hint of apprehension in his voice, as though he too were secretly nervous about coming here. “You’ll see.”

Eventually, the car slows down to a near crawl, and Steve steers them down an even bumpier pitted road, almost completely hidden by the swath of giant trees and brush. If one didn’t know it was there, it would have been very easy to miss. Half a mile in, the cramped road widened and revealed a small, clean enclosure that jutted up against the lapping shores of a lake, tightly hugged by tall, thick white jack pines. Amongst the clear cut land was a small, plank board cabin, muted brown and shuttered shut. It was nothing like Steve’s house in Hawkins—in fact, it was the polar opposite.

It was small—smaller than Hoppers cabin in the woods—and worn. Old. Sagging. Near ancient with a peeling shingle roof covered in copious amounts of reddened, dry pine needles that enveloped the building in a close knit canopy, nearly obscuring the building from the lake. Upon closer inspection, Jonathan discovered that the dark panel boards that covered the exterior weren’t painted brown, but rather were made of old pine planks, dark and shimmering with expunged resin from age. Faded, time wore wooden slates covered old, peeling white window panes, a few which had cracks in the glass. Steve—all smiles and restless energy—pulled the key out of the ignition, exited the car and headed towards a patch of bush. Jonathan realized quite quickly that he was already seeking to remove the shutters, and as he got out of the car, Steve had returned from an old wood shed carrying a ladder.

“There’s only two bedrooms!” Steve hollers at him from around the other side of the cabin. “Nancy and Robin can share one once they get here and we get to fight over the other bed—loser gets the lumpy couch.”

Jonathan nods despite Steve being unable to see him as he worked on removing the window covers. He begins grabbing their bags from the car and discovers that the cabin didn’t have a real lock—it was just an old wooden wedge that slotted down and held the exterior screen door in place. And upon entering, he discovers too that the interior of the cabin was just as old.

Slick, yellowing boards created walls that didn’t completely touch the ceiling, with one that divided the space into two bedrooms from the main room, just as Steve had said. The rest of the cabin was just one large room and an old ratty couch served as a divider, marking the space evenly between the kitchen and a dining area. Even the appliances were old—next to a rickety looking table sat a dated white Electrolux gas stove, accompanied by a chipped, ceramic white sink and a rounded, space age looking refrigerator. Off to the side, near the bedrooms, Jonathan discovered a fourth room—it was small and cramped and contained a toilet (but no shower), and the panel walls of the room suggested that the space was built as an afterthought. Bathing apparently, was to happen in the lake.

Jonathan set the bags down on the couch, and behind him, light flooded into the room. He spun around, turning to find Steve pulling the last of the window slates off the exterior of the cabin on the steps of the ladder. It presented a wonderful view, with a slow, slopping descent onto a calm, clear lake that was embellished by acute nothingness—just more pine trees and brush, extending out beyond the horizon of the blue, blue waters. Near the edge of the lake he could see an old, grey dock that was missing more than a few boards, as well as what looked like the remnants of an old fire pit.

For a moment, Jonathan just stood there and stared.

If he had to think of a word to describe the place, it would be sagging. Everything felt heavy and old, and as he watched the water lapping along the lakeside, he tried to imagine Steve as a boy out here in the woods with his grandfather in a place so indescribably rustic and simple, especially compared to his neat, clean house in Hawkins. It was an odd thought, he realized, imagining someone like Steve ever enjoying himself out here in a place like this. Steve, with his fancy car and his fancy hair existing without the wealth of materialism that was an intrinsic part of his namesake and identity.

He thought that maybe he should ask him about it—about how someone like him, who took twenty minute showers and lived in a house that looked like the furniture had been plucked straight out of a magazine’s showroom could ever find himself enjoying a place like this—but he realized that Steve had yet to come inside. Rather, as Jonathan approached the old picture window he found Steve was standing towards the lake with his arms spread out catching the rays of sunshine through the trees. And suddenly, very quietly, Jonathan realized that Steve loving a place like this wasn’t quite so strange. That maybe the house in Hawkins wasn’t ever really somewhere Steve called home. There didn’t seem to be very many happy memories there, but when Steve had mentioned his grandfather and his times spent coming here in the summers, his face had lit up like a kid on Christmas morning.

Jonathan smiles, and Steve, standing by the lakeside in the overwhelming vastness of the empty woods by the quiet lake looks like a glimmering golden summer god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cabin life is a go!


	8. Chapter 8

“My ass hurts,” Steve whines. “_And_ my back.”

It’s late in the afternoon and they’re sitting on the wobbly remains of the old grey dock. Between them are the empty cans of too many cheap beer, and Jonathan feels sleepy. Not tired sleepy, but day drunk sleepy. The hours between arriving at the cabin and now had been interspersed by general laziness with the occasional bouts of silence tempered by meaningless, but comfortable small talk. He discovers that Steve doesn't really like his job, but he likes working with Robin, and Jonathan tells him about the loan he took out at the bank a few days ago. When he mentions it, Steve goes quiet for a few minutes, eyes hard and mouth pressed tight, like he's thinking really hard about what he wants to say and how he wants to say it, but then he says nothing at all and says, _“Look!”_, pointing to the sky, his finger tracing the outline of a lone bird drifting in the stratosphere.

Now, Jonathan dips his dangling feet into the water—it feels cold, almost too cold to swim—and if he’s being honest with himself, his ass hurts a little too. The wooden boards are rough and splintered and the roughness chaffs at the bare skin of his lower thighs.

“Get up?” is all he can suggest and he takes a sip of his beer, hours warm from sitting under the hot sun. It tastes distinctly skunky and his lip curls into a frown.

Next to him, Steve just huffs but he doesn’t move. The sun, in combination with the beer, seems to have rendered him immobile. Then, his fingers stretch out and Steve swipes blindly at the space between them, groping at the air.

“Beer?” he pleads, still lying flat on his back. Steve’s words in particular reveal more about his current state of inebriation than his relaxed posture does. When he speaks, it’s markedly different from how it was just a few hours ago. His voice, loosened by the pull of alcohol, comes out quieter than it usual does and noticeably deeper. Casually, his voice crawls upon Jonathan in a heavy sort of way and he can't help but to think how unsettlingly attractive it sounds.

“You’re useless,” Jonathan decides flatly, but his voice is edged by an undeniable softness.

“You love me,” Steve rebukes, but any intensity to the words are smothered by the slowness in which he speaks. “C’mon—gimme.” With a small, breathy chuckle, Jonathan complies and presses a warm beer into Steve’s waiting palm.

Jonathan isn’t really sure how they really got here—mildly day drunk and baking in the sun—but he doesn’t really mind it, even if he does feel a tad restless and flushed. It didn't help that Steve was laying topless next to him, looking like the all-American poster boy for summer.

Jonathan takes another sip of beer and tries not to think about that.

Earlier, after unpacking their things, they had put their groceries into the rumbly old refrigerator, furled out the dusty bedding off the porch railings to air out, and gone their separate ways. Steve had grabbed an old AM radio tucked away on a shelf, carried it down to the dock and had sprawled out topless on the planks like a starfish. Jonathan hadn’t minded and been content to just to leave him be—sun tanning, or whatever it was Steve was doing—had never really been his thing. Instead he found himself inspecting the property with his camera. He had snapped shots of things he found interesting, like the moss covered wood shed, or the rain barrel near the door, which with age had collapsed and splayed its guts of twigs and pine needled in a way that he would almost call pretty. It wasn’t a bad way to spend his time, but Steve seemed to disagree. Some forty minutes later, a slightly sweaty Steve had reappeared looking for tinfoil, grabbed a six pack of beer from the fridge and dragged Jonathan back down to the dock with him. According to Steve, it was prime sunning hour, and Jonathan really, _really_ needed some sun.

Which of course, had been made a moot point when Jonathan, slightly self-conscious and predictably surly, refused to take off his shirt.

The tinfoil was for the radio and Steve had fashioned a shoddy, balled extension onto the tip of the antenna. It was still a bit fuzzy, but Steve insisted it was getting better reception than before. Unfortunately, the only station it seemed to be able to pick up was the local country one from Freemont. Even Steve, who listened to just about everything on the radio, had to agree it was bad but he kept it on regardless and occasionally hummed along.

“Man, I think there’s an actual splinter in my ass,” Steve whines again.

Jonathan just chuckles and turns to look at Steve—he was still sprawled out across the planks with his shades covering his eyes, staring straight up into the whites of the late afternoon sun. Lazily, he puffs on a cigarette, the space around him littered by empty beer cans.

He looks dead almost, Jonathan thinks errantly, and if it wasn’t for the steady fall and rise of his chest, or the way his fingers were idly tracing the rim of his beer can, he would have made a convincing corpse.

On impulse alone, he reaches for his camera.

“Don’t move,” he instructs.

Steve, of course, moves. He hums quizzically, craning his head sideways slightly in order to catch Jonathan’s gaze, and his entire upper body’s position shifts.

“I said, _don’t move_,” Jonathan sighs.

“Why?” Steve asks, but obediently he falls back flat, resuming his previous horizontal sprawl.

“’Cause,” Jonathan says, but says nothing else. Steve doesn’t pry and Jonathan is secretly grateful, unsure of how he would explain to him that he _kinda_ looked dead, but was also sort of exponentially more ridiculous looking (it was the mint green flip flops, Jonathan thinks—definitely those), but despite all this, he was still cute. And if he really wants to dig deeper within the guts of growing denials, a larger part of him really just wants to remember this moment—it was as simple as that.

Steve, he thinks, looks _nice_ out here. He seemed...freer...almost, and in an understated sort of way, more genuine. In fact, there hadn't been a single moment of posturing since they had arrived at the cabin, as if all the nervous energy Steve normally wore wrapped tight around his body like a suffocatingly thick blanket had disappeared. Unthinkingly, Jonathan smiles and he lifts his camera, peers through the lens, adjusts the focus and snaps a quick picture. “Okay,” he then adds. “You can move now.”

The camera’s distinctive clicking sound betrays him however and instantly Jonathan feels his cheeks colour. There’s a moment of panic, where his minds slips back to the tenth grade and the incident with Nancy and quickly, Jonathan utters a mortified: “_Shit_—sorry.”

He should have asked, he thinks.

For a moment Steve doesn’t seem to acknowledge that his photo had been taken beyond a long, lazy hum. Then, seconds later, he yawns and pushes himself up on the bend of his elbows, tipping up his sunglasses up to rest on the crown of his forehead.

"Like what you see?" he asks, voice suitably smug.

If Jonathan had been taking a sip of his beer, he might have choked on it. Instead, he feels unnaturally warm and in a rush of embarrassment, he sets his camera down behind him, hiding it from view, and promptly shakes his head.

“In your dreams, Steve,” he shoots back, but even to his own ears his voice sounds painfully awkward. Desperately exasperated almost, and spoken far too quickly. Jonathan—already playing dangerously close to a fire—recoils as if burned, Steve’s words reminding him of how painfully conflicted he felt.

Moments like this made being around Steve really, really hard.

Steve, however, doesn’t really react. Rather, he lets out a quiet chuckle, and with one final shove, he sits up fully, his arms stretching high as he lets out another sleepy yawn. The warm flush of his skin stretches, the subtle lines of his ribs outlined by the smooth planes of his abdomen, furling upwards towards his lightly haired chest, and Jonathan stares, painfully aware of how this is most he’s ever seen of Steve, _ever._

Quickly, he turns away, searching for something—_anything_—to look at instead.

“It’s okay,” Steve then grins, reaching for his beer. His fingers brush the edge of Jonathan’s hand and his touch feels painfully hot, surprisingly more so than the overall warmness that his body seemed to radiate. “I know I’m model material—all the girls love me. Guys love me too. It’s the hair.” He takes a sip of beer and smirks, running a hand through it.

Jonathan peers over at Steve despite knowing that his hair was styled as per usual: carefully coiffed and set in place as though accidentally windswept. Jonathan also knows, however, that it was _anything_ but, and that the amount of time Steve spent on his hair in the mornings was embarrassingly long and that it’s appearance was made to be purposefully disheveled.

He might have been cute, but in response to all his primping, Jonathan rolls his eyes. Steve’s Harrington’s ego had just reached an all-time high.

“Your hair looks better when you don’t style it,” Jonathan states flatly, if not a tad petulantly. He thinks back to Steve’s hair that morning when they had gone to breakfast together. Without all the product in it, it had been noticeably longer. Longer than Jonathan would have ever expected it to be. Softer looking. Understandably natural (and straighter), and much to Jonathan’s chagrin, he had liked it like that.

His honesty, however, seems to have an unintended effect, and _pop_—Steve’s ego deflates like a pricked balloon.

“_What?_” the other boy lets out.

Jonathan turns again and finds that Steve looks genuinely_ offended_ that he didn’t like his hair.

“Your hair,” Jonathan repeats offhandedly, fidgeting. “It looks better when you don’t style it.”

Jonathan watches as Steve’s face freezes in something that was akin to shock, and after an uncharacteristically long moment of silence, he vehemently shakes his head.

“Okay, so that’s _bullshit!_” he declares. “My hair is perfect! It’s my best feature—there is _nobody_ who doesn't like it!”

All Jonathan can offer him is a noncommittal shrug, but he finds that the corner of his lips were tugging upwards.

“Alright—,” Steve says and he stands up in a sudden huff. Jonathan eyes the other curiously and he almost wants to laugh—like really laugh—because Steve was _so_ worked up right now that it was almost funny. “So what’s wrong with it? Is it the volume? The length? The ends? Nancy said sometimes she didn’t like the ends because they looked feathered and—,”

Jonathan fights back a laugh, biting down on the thin line of his lower lip.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he cuts in, voice thick with amusement. Because really, there isn’t: Steve’s hair always looks good, no matter what he did with it. But...

“It’s just…I like it better when it’s not like—,”—he motions his hand in Steve’s general direction—“…_that._”

Steve doesn’t say anything. Rather, he towers over Jonathan, peering down at him with a scornful gaze, lips pursed and arms perched haughtily on the jut of his hips. His reaction, Jonathan thinks, is nothing short of dramatic.

Momentarily, he thinks that maybe he should apologize—he didn’t realize how deep Steve’s love of his own hair ran—or how _offended_ he would get by anyone inferring his hair was anything less than ideal—but the more Steve stares, the more Jonathan feels the bubbly push of laughter rising from the depths of his chest, and he knows by the pull of his cheeks that he was grinning. Steve was just being so…_so_...

Ridiculous.

His restraint breaks and lets out a loud, sharp sounding laugh and Steve’s eyes narrow.

“Oh, you’re _so_ done for, Byers,” Steve quickly declares.

Then, two seconds later, Jonathan feels the cold rush of water enveloping his entire body, clothes and all, and he sinks to the bottom of the lake.

His mind goes blank, temporarily deadened by the shock of the icy water, and then, seconds later, it registers with him that Steve had shoved him off the dock.

With a gasp of air, he resurfaces and _holy shit_ the water was _freezing_. He bobs up and down for a quick second, trying to get his bearings, and when he looks up, Steve is cackling.

“_Steve!_” he yells from the water. He considers retaliating—he could very easily reach up and pull his legs out from under him, but fuck—it really was cold. Bone numbingly cold. Instead he frowns and finds himself paddling towards shore. Steve was still chuckling, and Jonathan considers throwing him the middle finger—he would deserve it, he thinks. Jonathan was fully clothed, and his camera had been dangerously close to being lost in the lake with him, but as he takes one last look up towards the edge of the dock, he finds that Steve was grinning even wider than before. His face looked absolutely _delighted_ by the outcome of his actions, and before Jonathan can react, Steve too launches himself off the dock, feet kicking wildly in the air.

“Steve—,” Jonathan chokes out in warning. “Shit, _no_—!”

The word ‘stop’ doesn’t even get the chance to make it out of his mouth as Steve splashes into the lake.

In the wake of water, Jonathan feels himself sink and he vaguely recognizes that Steve is pulling him under with him. Under the surface of the water, he can feel Steve’s fingers gripping tightly to the neckline of his shirt, limbs and feet and skin tangled against his own as they hit the lake bottom, toes sinking lightly into the mucky sand. The deeper water was still freezing, enveloping his skin in an icy scald—but Steve’s fingers feel worse, burning him, burning his skin, his lungs, and Jonathan chokes on water.

In a panicked rush, he shoves Steve away, his feet pressing into the soft sand and his calves propel himself upwards. He doesn't know why—or maybe he does, maybe it’s the burning—but he needs to get away. In the sudden push, Steve’s fingers are lost in the rush of water, trailing down the length of his arm in a hot, painful streak and Jonathan gasps, taking in a lungful of air.

As he surfaces, he finds that his teeth are chattering. He thinks he should be mad at Steve. Or something. Irritated? He’s not. Instead his mind is overwhelmingly preoccupied by how Steve’s touch set his skin on fire. Seconds later, Steve bobs up next to him, hair wet and flat against the reds of his cold cheeks and he splashes Jonathan inadvertently with the flail of his arms.

“Fuck, man!” He’s lost all laughter and all warmth, the cold of the icy lake having robbed him of his glee. “Why didn’t you tell me it was so _cold?!_”

“I—I _t-tried_, Jonathan chatters back irritably and Steve just nods.

“C’mon,” Steve says, shooting him an apologetic look, the water lapping at his chin. “I think there’s towels in one of the bedrooms.”

Then, Steve dips below the surface again, his entire body swallowed by the glassy blues of the lake.

When he resurfaces, he’s a couple feet ahead of him, the ends of his messy hair dripping rivulets of icy water against the nape of his bare neck.

Jonathan swims after him, his mind vaguely recognizing that when Steve's hair dries later, he won't have the product needed to style it.

\---

The pair discover that there aren’t any towels. Instead, they find themselves bundled into musty smelling bed sheets, their wet clothing stripped away and left in a damp bundle near the door. Steve throws Jonathan a pair of his sweat pants and disappears into one of the bedrooms, emerging minutes later in a soft, plain pajama bottoms. The bed sheet, Jonathan notes, is still bundled around him like a large, white cape.

“Shit, man—,” Steve announces. He’s all frowns, with pale cheeks and lips slightly more reddish than usual. If Jonathan looks hard enough, he can see too that Steve is shivering. “That was cold.”

Jonathan simply nods in agreement and pulls the sheet closer to his chest, perching himself crossed legged on the couch. Steve sits down next to him and the pair lapse into a long, lingering silence.

Outside, the sun was beginning to set, and it washes the interior of the cabin in a faint orange hue, setting the yellow pine boards alight with faint, glossy incandescence. Its warm glow however, feels incredibly misleading—Jonathan’s teeth are still chattering and the tips of his toes feel numb. Quietly, he recognizes that it's a strange sensation to be so bone achingly cold, and Jonathan tries to not think about it—about how Steve’s touch physically hurt him—and how now, that same scorching warmness was nowhere to be found.

“You’re a dick, you know that, right?” Jonathan eventually murmurs petulantly. He nudges Steve’s shoulder just a touch and Steve nudges back. There’s a shit eating grin on his face, but when it doesn’t have its intended effect, Steve slowly nods as if to silently acknowledge that perhaps shoving Jonathan into the lake wasn’t the nicest thing to do.

“Sorry,” Steve tries. He’s fidgeting slightly, fingers peeking out through the bed sheet and playing with the folds of the fabric of his pajama pants.

“Might have been funnier if the water didn’t feel like we were swimming in the fucking artic,” Jonathan quietly acquiesces with a soft, but not unkind murmur. The faint warmness is his voice is enough, and next to him Steve lets out a loud, sharp sounding laugh as he nods in agreement.

“I know what will warm us up,” he then grins and his smile is nothing short of conspiratorial. He stands, his bed sheet trailing behind him as he heads towards the kitchen. After a few seconds of rummaging through the cupboards, he returns with dusty, glass capped decanter, the contents of which are a deep, golden-hued brown. When Jonathan doesn’t say anything and simply blinks, Steve lets out a deep set sigh and sets the unmarked bottle down on the couch between them and says: “whiskey.”

“_Oh_,” is all Jonathan says in sudden understanding.

Steve nods.

“Yeah.”

"Whiskeys good," Jonathan shrugs and Steve hums in agreement.

Steve sips from the bottle first, and from his reaction Jonathan can tell that the contents are either incredibly strong, mildly poisonous, or perhaps both.

“_Shit_,” Steve coughs, handing the bottle over to Jonathan. Instantaneously, his cheeks had become a flushed red and he hisses as though the whiskey had clawed at his insides on the way down.

“Good stuff?” Jonathan smirks and Steve coughs again, letting out a choked, “_Ugh!_”

“Not sure I want to try it after that reaction,” Jonathan says flatly. He uncorks the decanter and cautiously sniffs at the contents—it was whiskey alright, although how old or even _good_ it was remained to be seen. It was at least old enough to have been here when Steve’s grandfather had been still alive, which was concerning simply because Jonathan had no idea how long ago that had been.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Steve says with another wheezy cough. His eyes, Jonathan notes, are watering and he almost looks like he’s in physical pain. It’s not nice, but he finds himself smirking: Steve choking on the whiskey gave him a small, if not childish feeling of payback. “I’m just not a whiskey man,” Steve then coughs again, as if this somehow explained his horrible reaction to liquor.

Jonathan’s not sure he believes him, but he takes a careless swig from the bottle anyways.

It burns in the way he expects it to, setting his tongue and throat on fire, and then with a final drop, he feels it pool in his stomach, hot and heavy. He doesn’t find himself coughing in the same way Steve does, but he does recoil, his lip curling at the awful, smoky taste.

“This is _bad_,” Jonathan says, wrinkling his nose, but it doesn’t stop him from taking another shot, the whiskey setting his senses on fire.

Steve nods.

“Really bad,” he parrots, and he takes the bottle out of Jonathan’s hand, downing another swig. He coughs less this time and instead the lines of his face flinch before he lets out a small, breathy sound of disgust. He takes another sip and passes the bottle back to Jonathan who does the same.

This time, the burning feels worse this time, not better like it's supposed to, and Jonathan almost gags.

“Why are we doing this?” he then asks, choking and laughing at the same time.

“Uh, we’re cold?” Steve responds flatly. “Do you feel less cold? I feel less cold.”

“I feel like my lungs are on fire,” Jonathan laughs. Then as an afterthought he adds: “I don’t think alcohol actually warms you up though. It just mimics the sensation by dilating your blood vessels and—,”

“—_Jesus_, Jonathan!” Steve cuts him off and grabs the bottle back out of Jonathan’s hands, taking another long drink. “It’s the middle of summer and I graduated from high school like. A year ago. Why are you giving me a crappy science lesson right now?!"

Jonathan is silent for a moment, as if he really has to think about it for a second, and then he finds himself giggling.

Shit. He was drunk. Really, really drunk.

"I...I don't know," he admits, chuckling lightly.

"It's because you're a giant nerd," Steve smirks, laughing alongside him. He twists towards him, their knees almost touching. "Did I ever tell you that before? That I thought you were a nerd. Like you were _so_ perfect, according to Nancy. Did great in every class and like. Fuck, man. You made me look so bad."

Jonathan blinks and bits back a thick laugh.

“Yeah, Steve—,” he laughs again, this time fully—"It’s called studying."

Steve wildly shakes his head.

“I studied!” he rebukes.

“Yeah, _kissing_ Nancy.”

Next to him, Steve takes in a sudden, sharp gasp of air and his eyes grow wide.

“She told you that?” he cries. “_No!_” He sounds scandalized again, as if he had truly meant to take his not-so secret study sessions with Nancy to the grave.

“She was just surprised that when I asked her over to study with me that I actually meant it,” Jonathan tells him plainly, but his lips curl into a sharp, telling smirk.

Steve let's out another short groan, squeezing his eyes shut and Jonathan begins snickers. He laughs until his chest hurts and when Steve's apparent embarrassment fades, he notices the other boy is eyeing him darkly.

"What else did Nancy tell you?" Steve suddenly pries.

"Lots," is all Jonathan can say, still trying to settle his laughter. "Like that you even tried to get her to 'study' while her parents were home."

"I actually did study sometimes!" Steve tries to defend. "Like real studying! Books and everything!"

"That's not what Nancy said," Jonathan shoots back slyly.

“_Well_,” Steve presses, and then there’s a pause, one where Steve shifts incrementally closer to him, leaning in, and Jonathan feels their knees press together, and Steve is close—so very close—close enough that he could see each and every individual freckle on the curves of his cheeks. “Did she also tell you that I’m an _excellent_ teacher?”

The tone of Steve’s words send Jonathan reeling and he finds himself choking on the thickness of his own tongue. For a brief moment, there's a second where Jonathan finds himself unable to breathe and his former laughter is swallowed by a loud, startled cough. In that moment he also becomes aware of altogether how close Steve was to him, and how Steve—who despite the unsettling innuendos of his boast—was flashing him a large, self-satisfied grin. Steve, it appeared, had _liked_ that he had embarrassed him, and Jonathan, red faced and suffocating, tries not to die.

“It’s true,” Steve smirks, still not pulling back. “I could show—,”

Then, very suddenly, Steve stops. He blinks, and he blinks again, and then and in a very somber, very slurred sounding voice he announces: “Shit, dude, I think I’m drunk.”

Jonathan exhales a deep, deep breath and he slumps into the couch, his mind swimming. Had Steve just…

Did he…

What was it that Steve had just been about to say?

“Uh, yeah, Steve,” Jonathan finally speaks. His voice comes out in a breathy laugh, soft and quiet and altogether too, too painful. “You’re really…”

A liar.

Or a terribly cruel flirt.

But Jonathan, with his chest tight and aching, doesn't say that. Instead, a sharp voice in his head reminds him of what he promised. Of the things he wouldn't ruin.

He wouldn't ruin it.

He won't.

Jonathan chooses cowardice for the hundredth time in weeks and the rest of his sentence dies unborn, lost to the strange, clawing silence that had suddenly grown between them.

"I'm really drunk too," he then tells Steve instead, as if this statement of fact could somehow smother the unspoken implications of what Steve had almost—_almost_—suggested.

He's not sure it works, but it doesn't matter because Steve doesn't respond.

Jonathan blinks.

All around him, the room was slipping into a hazy fuzz. The orange hues of the sun had completely disappeared, swallowed completely by the glassy surface of the lake. In its wake, the pair found themselves bathed in the harsh luminescence of the flickering, ancient fluorescent lights of the cabin.

It felt unnatural. Offsetting. And strange.

Next to him, Steve seems to have slipped away too, altogether far too quiet for someone who had been positively bursting with energy mere moments ago. Jonathan tries not to think about it or what that even means. Rather, he tries to distract himself by focusing on the muted buzzing of his own limbs and how his mind was soaring slowly from one thought to the next, the thoughts altogether too heavy and confusing to make any real sense. To Steve and his words and his closeness and how maybe, just maybe he had been imagining it all. Had any of that really just happened?

It didn't help that every time he looked at Steve lately, he was filled with nothing short of a dull, painful ache. Right now, that ache was overwhelming and telling himself it was just a soreness from laughing too much is a lie that even his drunk self can't swallow. He has so many things he wants to ask and even say but he knows he's drunk and he knows he shouldn't and so he just...doesn't. Instead, he blinks past it, chewing nervously on the torn flesh of his lower lip.

"Steve?" he tries, his voice slippery and slow.

He vaguely recognizes that drinking this much alcohol so quickly has made him feel heavy, and it's a heaviness that has spread to every part of his body, pulling him down, deep into his denials. He thinks that maybe he should get something to drink. Water. Water would be good.

“We should…” He looks over to Steve, whose lidded eyes were tracing the blank, blackened picture window, casting back the fractured reflection of the boys sitting side by side on the couch. “Sleep,” Jonathan finishes in a quiet murmur. “It’s late."

Steve just nods, and then wordlessly he excuses himself. From the tips of his fingers, he flashes him his lighter, a silent goodnight to an otherwise deafening silence. Then, Steve is gone, the faint glow from the tip of a burning cigarette mirrored back beyond the picture window in the dark.

\---

He’s not sure how much time has passed when he hears the jarring creak of the old screen door cutting through the silence of the cabin.

In the darkness, Jonathan blinks.

He feels cold. Both he and Steve had forgotten to shut the windows earlier in the day, and his sheet, having been repurposed as a towel, feels vaguely damp and cloying against his skin. Steve too had mentioned something about lighting the indoor woodfire stove, but neither of them had followed through with the promise of finding dry kindling. The woodfire remained unlit, and instead Jonathan tries to make due, curling in on himself and pulling the sheet closer, trying—and failing—to find sleep.

In the blank space of the early evening, he hears Steve cough. There are footsteps shuffling against well-worn wooden floors, and muttered, vaguely annoyed intonations as he bumps into furniture, the sound of a lone chair scraping against the floor.

Then, there is nothing but silence.

Jonathan, acutely aware of Steve’s presence just beyond the walls of his room, quietly shifts, hedging himself closer towards the center of the mattress. It's a mistake, as the box spring squeaks loudly, the coils crying under his weight, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He never drank the water he wanted to. He never asked Steve the questions he wanted to, either. He never—

He exhales, and again, there’s nothing but silence. Just nothing. Steve, he thinks, has found his way to his bed to sleep.

Jonathan exhales, his dull mind swimming, the silence from their earlier, drunken conversation pulling him under.

Then, there is an abrupt knock, and the doorknob to his room rattles open, the off kilter door scraping against the floor. Jonathan stills, eyes searching futilely in the darkness, and without a single word, Steve falls down flat onto the bed next to him.

“Hey, Jonathan?” he asks, voice deep and throaty. He smells of the smoke of too many cigarettes and the coolness of the outdoors. Whiskey too traces his breath and Jonathan feels his limbs stiffen.

Next to him, Steve curls towards him, his hair, still slightly damp, tickling the bare skin of his shoulder. Steve’s hand is also there, far too close, far too familiar, and the skin of his forearm brushes against his side. Jonathan feels paralyzed—Steve’s touch burning hotter and more achingly than ever before—but helpless by his own inaction, he doesn’t move.

“Yeah?” he finds himself murmuring instead, and he blinks again dully, unable to fully understand why Steve had chosen to lay down next to him on the bed.

“Truth, or dare?" Steve prods softly, voice somehow loud against the emptiness of the too quiet cabin.

It was as if the weird silence in the living room earlier had never happened and Jonathan's chest explodes in confusion. And Steve's question, utterly unexpected—a disjointed non sequitur to an otherwise already confusing evening—plows through it all, rendering Jonathan breathless.

"_What?_" is all he manages to rasps out.

"Truth. Or. Dare."

And even though Jonathan can't see Steve or his face, he knows that the other is grinning just by the tone of his voice.

Jonathan blinks again and feels his face scrunch tight in consternation, but in the very least his chest doesn't feel as tight any more. He thinks that maybe, just maybe, this is Steve's way of making things normal again. Or that maybe both of them had just been stupidly, recklessly drunk and that the entirety of everything about the whole damn day had been nothing but meaningless words birthed by too many beers and the sips of poisonous whiskey.

What he does know is that he doesn't have the courage to ask.

"Truth," he finally responds, and he can feel Steve shift again, curling onto his side to face him.

"Favorite color," Steve asks breathily.

"Green," he replies easily and he can hear Steve's teeth click together in sudden acknowledgement.

"Really?" the other hums.

"Really," Jonathan smiles.

"Ok, now you ask me—,"

"—Steve, this is stupid," Jonathan cuts in, but he finds himself laughing quietly regardless.

"No, this is fun," Steve tells him.

"Fine. Truth or dare."

"Truth."

"Um…favorite food?" he tries lamely.

"Pizza," Steve tells him easily. "No, wait. Deep dish pizza."

"Deep dish?"

"Oh god, yeah. Have you ever been to Chicago? They make this amazing pizza that's almost like eating a cake. But its pizza and it's just...really, _really_ good."

"The farthest I've ever been is Indianapolis," Jonathan admits and his mind is swimming again because all of this seemed so normal. So unashamedly normal and just right, and something that friends do, but the ache was still there and it wasn't fair because even if Steve had been stupidly drunk (and still was), he knows that something as stupid as Steve jokingly offering to kiss him shouldn't have made things between so... weird. That silence, Jonathan thinks, shouldn't have existed.

He doesn't say this. Instead, he shifts away, making room on the bed for Steve's too close body and just Steve hums a sleepy, "Really?", and Jonathan just nods.

"Really," he tells him, lying flat on his back.

"I think about moving there sometimes," Steve suddenly murmurs in the darkness. "Chicago that is. I have an aunt there. Then I remember how expensive it is and how I don't have a real job or whatever, because I messed up bad in high school...but fuck man, do I ever miss that pizza."

His voice sounds sad almost, Jonathan thinks. Decidedly serious despite both of them being so damn drunk. But before Jonathan can think to ask him about it, Steve reaches over and pokes at his side lightly, letting out another sleepy sounding, "Truth or dare?"

Jonathan, too exhausted to move, picks truth.

Later, when he finally finds the overdue tiredness from too much sun and too much to drink making it too hard for him to even speak, let alone answer silly, drunken questions, he blinks in the greying darkness one last time. Steve didn't seem to care that Jonathan hadn't answered his last query (it was something about family pets, he thinks—maybe) and was laying still on the mattress next to him.

He had fallen asleep and Jonathan, too tired to care or even think about how there was a spare bed in a room mere meters away, exhales and closes his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Steve....Steve, Steve, Steve. That was an awful long smoke break, sweetie. Had some things to think about, maybe?


	9. Chapter 9

“Six skips, Jonathan—beat that.”

In the palm of his hand, Jonathan turns over the warm, flat rock, his fingers tracing the smooth, unblemished surface. Under the patchwork sky of whites and blues, he vaguely realizes that he feels uncharacteristically content. It’s an even feeling, one that is calm and relaxing and altogether _misleading,_ because he knows he shouldn’t feel like this.

He knows.

He knows because moments like this are, and have been for quite some time, cut short by that undulating ache of anxiety he feels whenever Steve does something as commonplace and inane as simply _smile _at him, and he _knows _that it’s an ache that has been eeking out furrows along the inside of his ribcage, each recurring wave more painful and intense than the last.

Despite knowing this, Jonathan also knows that perhaps he is altogether too stupid to stop himself—too selfish—and his thoughts betray him again. His mind drifts to how time spent alone with Steve as they skip rocks across the uninterrupted surface of the too cool lake is somehow better than time spent alone.

He releases the rock in his hand, tossing it towards the lakes' surface and it skips, once, twice, and _plop_, the stone sinks beneath the calm waters.

Next to him, Steve beams—the unbeaten champion of rock skipping—and he picks up a stick, twirling it in his fingers. Then, his grin is cut short, a small frown tugging down at the sides of his lips, and he sighs.

It’s something that he has been doing it all morning, and Jonathan thinks with a selfish sort of disappointment that he knows exactly why: it was late—later then when Nancy and Robin said they’d be arriving—and Steve’s constant sighing was a semi-vocal reminder of that (even if he was too proud to fully admit it). Steve was like that sometimes: far too blinded by his own ego to fully admit any emotional transparency, even over something as silly as the girls’ lateness. It was as if admitting he was disappointed would somehow make him lesser as a person, but the aloof front Steve wore at the moment fitted him like a poor mask at best.

Besides, if Jonathan _really_ thought about it, Steve's behavior was likely a lingering, temperamental hang-up from his highschool days: Steve pretending to be anything less than self-assured and unbothered was a bad habit like the cigarettes he smoked or the way he stole his dad's beer, and Jonathan was slowly learning that Steve immensely struggled with emotional honesty. Being personally transparent wasn't his strong suit.

Like now for example: instead of vocalizing _anything_ following his heavy sigh, for the umpteenth time that day, Steve returned to silence and crouched on his heels, tracing his name into the sand with the waterlogged stick.

Thickly, Jonathan swallowed.

“Shouldn’t the girls be here by now?” he then asks, willing to say what Steve is unable to.

Steve, still poking at the gritty sand on the shore with the stick, presses his lips thin and tenses for a moment, looking up to Jonathan strangely—as if perhaps realizing he wasn't as subtle about his mounting despondency as he thought he had been—before he dips his head in a quick, accepting nod.

“Yeah...probably,” he exhales, but the tension in his shoulders is still there, his jaw set even and expression stiff. “Nancy said they’d be leaving by 8 am.”

Jonathan hums in affirmation, doing quick mental calculations of when the girls should have arrived—nearly two hours ago, he thinks—and he picks up another stone half buried in the sand. It’s black and it feels pleasantly warm, and he turns it over twice in his palm before flinging it towards the water, the stone skipping four times before sinking beneath the surface.

As Steve stands from his crouch on the lake shore, eyes drawn towards the ripples on the water, Jonathan thinks that maybe he should suggest to Steve that they try and call the girls. But the lingering selfishness—of having time spent with Steve alone—remains.

They had spent their morning practising weekend laziness, with Jonathan waking up alone, the spot on the mattress next to him cold and rumpled. There had been a brief moment in his post-sleep haze where he wondered if Steve had actually even slept next to him, and his mind flitted to the night before, trying with all the slowness of thick molasses on a cold winter's day to figure out if the memory of Steve's body laying next to him in the darkness had been nothing but a dream. That delusion however, had been quickly shattered the moment he shuffled into the main room of the cabin where Steve was making them breakfast. As he flipped an egg in a frypan, the other announced not so nicely that sharing a bed with Jonathan had been _terrible._

“You’re a blanket hog,” Steve had stated bluntly, his hands at work with a spatula. “You stole all the bedding halfway through the night and I woke up with your knee in my back.”

Jonathan had felt a momentary flash of embarrassment before he settled himself, remembering astutely that Steve had the option of another bed and he had rebutted with a quick-tempered:

“Maybe you should have slept in your own room then.”

Despite Jonathan’s withering stare, Steve had just laughed warmly, setting down a plate in front of him on the table, hot off the stove.

“Yeah, but it was _freezing_ last night,” the other smirked. “Remind me we need to shut the windows later.”

Jonathan had accepted his answer quietly and asked no more questions. Instead, he found himself preoccupied by Steve’s breakfast, which was surprisingly good despite his assumption that the other didn’t know how to cook. When he asked him about it, Steve had just shrugged and said he had been cooking for himself since he was twelve. It was a swim or sink situation, he explained, and he had quickly grown tired of ordering taking out every other night.

Neither of them however, mentioned their time drinking the whiskey the night before, nor the tense silence that had followed Steve's would-be suggestion of them kissing. It suited Jonathan just fine in the same way it suited him now to pretend that he was okay with how their friendship was unfolding.

Cloistered and feigning, neither of them ever seemed to have the courage to speak what was really on their mind. The previous happiness he had felt moments ago with the warm stone in his hand quickly vanished, and he frowned, the ache in his chest returning in a slow crawling wave.

Now as a pair, they both appeared restless. Even if Steve's timeline for Nancy and Robin's departure was off, they still should have arrived some time ago.

"We could call them?" Jonathan suddenly suggests, guilt gnawing at his gut. "Doesn't the Wheeler’s car have a modular cellular phone installed? Maybe they got lost."

Steve too hums as if he's considering this before he acquiesces a small nod, shoving his hands deep into his cutoff jean short pockets.

"We'd have to go to Freemont," Steve realizes with a small frown of his own, and Jonathan just shrugs, craning his head towards the clearing near the cabin and the car.

"At least we won't miss them if they're late? There's only one road in towards the lake."

Steve seems to accept this answer, again nodding slowly, and he throws the stick in his hand skyward, the small branch arching out towards the horizon.

\---

Three dimes and a quietly disappointed Steve later, the pair had their answer to the girls’ lateness. After trying the Wheeler’s house, as well as the Wheeler’s modular car number and receiving nothing but endless ringing dial tones, Steve had fished into his pocket for a third dime and called Robin.

From what Jonathan could glean from the one-sided conversation, Nancy’s flight from Toledo had been delayed. If she was lucky, the new flight would be arriving in Indianapolis later in the evening, but this didn't account for the drive back to Hawkins. Robin, licenceless (and carless), was stranded.

Jonathan, perched against the wall near the payphone outside the grocery store, listened quietly as Steve immediately suggested that he drive back home to get her, and from the way his face morphed into a thick, dejected frown, he could tell that Robin had shot the idea down.

“It’s only a three hour drive, Rob’,—” Steve tried. “No, I mean, _yeah._ Tomorrow? Yeah, we were coming back then. Well, _no_. But—,”—a sigh—“I guess it doesn’t make sense, but—oh? Well,_ shit. _That...sucks. Have fun at work, I guess? No, no, it’s fine—don’t worry about it. Jonathan? Oh, yeah—still pasty and white—,”—a small smile had edge it’s way onto his face and Steve cradled the receiver against his shoulder—“Me? Golden like that kid in the _Coppertone _suntan commercial. Yeah, yeah, okay. Love you too. Wait—_what? _God, Robin, _no! _Why would you—_no!_ I’m hanging up now—_really!_ _Bye!_”

Whatever it was Robin had said in those last few seconds of the conversation seemed to have flustered Steve, and he hung up the receiver with his cheeks unnaturally pink.

“Shit,” he murmured.

“No girls?” Jonathan dares to ask, even though he already knew the answer.

Steve shakes his head, striding towards the car.

“No,” he frowns. “Nancy’s stuck in Toledo and Robin said she figured there was no point of me driving to get her since we were coming back tomorrow anyways...so, she took a shift at the video store.”

Jonathan wrinkles his nose, a silent agreement to Steve’s obvious disappointment, and hopped into the passenger seat.

“That sucks,” is all he can offer as Steve slides into the driver’s seat. Again, Steve just nods, fiddling with keys before inserting them into the ignition and letting out a breathy exhale.

“Man, it really does,” he says, tossing his head back. He shifted the car into gear and steered them back towards the road leading to the lakeside. “This was supposed to be our last hurrah! Now it’s just two dudes hanging out in a cabin in the woods together.”

“I think I’ve seen a porno that starts out like that,” Jonathan laughs softly and Steve's face immediately returns to its flushed state. A stiff, gurgled choking sound emanated from his mouth before he coughed out a sharp: “_Dude—!_”

Instantly, Jonathan considers the implication of his words and he too feels his face turn hot, quickly assuring the other that, “It was a joke! _A joke!_”

“A_ joke_?”

“Yeah—you know, like a cliche?"

“A _what?_”

Jonathan blinks, briefly considering how Steve managed to pass highschool lit, before shaking his head.

“A stereotype, Steve_,"_ he sighs. "Or an overused phrase? Like, remember how when we were kids and everyone was singing that one song by _Foreigner?”_

“Which one?” Steve squints. “There’s a lot of them.”

_“‘Cold As Ice’_,” Jonathan huffs as if it was the only and most obvious one.

“_Oh,_ okay—yeah. What about it?”

“That phase—’_you’re as cold as ice’_—is an example of a cliche,” Jonathan explains.

Steve pauses, as if he really has to think about what Jonathan is saying, which results in an awkwardly prolonged silence. Jonathan watches mutely as Steve seems to struggle with the concept, or maybe he was thinking of something else altogether because his cheeks were still pink, and his ears too were turning red. Then, suddenly, as he steers the car onto the dirt road that leads towards the lakeside, he sharply shakes his head.

"Man—you're as bad as Robin!" he abruptly declares with a loud groan. “What the hell does _that_ have to do with pornos?”

“_Steve—_,” Jonathan tries through the roll of his eyes, because _holy shit, how could Steve be this thick?_ It doesn’t matter, and before Steve can respond, a sudden thought strikes him and his curiosity gets the better of him. "What _did _Robin have to say earlier?" he coolly pries. Despite not specifying which part of the conversation he was referring to, his question seems to set Steve jumping in his seat, and his eyes grow wide.

"_Nothing!_" the other quickly defends, which was a clear sign she said _something._ “I just meant that you’re both nerdy, like really nerdy because you were talking about cliches, and—,”

It’s the worst case of word vomit Jonathan has ever seen from Steve lately and the look he shoots him has the other shrinking into his shirt and silencing him all in one go. Steve lets out a heavy sounding exhale, his face more than flustered, and Jonathan just stares. Steve was acting weird—way weirder than usual—and if Jonathan didn’t know him any better, he would have thought he was nervous. But his leg wasn’t shaking, and his fingers remained still, albeit white knuckled and gripping tightly to the car's steering wheel.

“Well, you won’t have to worry about it soon,” Jonathan then tries, half joking, half serious. “Us nerds are going to college in September.” It’s an attempt (a poor one) to lighten the mood and free the car from the sudden, strangling silence that had fallen over them, but his joke falls flat.

Instead of laughing, Steve slips him a curious albeit sharp look, as if to ask: _why the fuck would you say that?_

Jonathan doesn’t know what this means, or if it means anything at all, and he instead flips on the radio to fill in the gaping silence. It’s the country station again, but he finds he doesn’t really mind it, if only because it offers a distraction to Steve’s overwhelming oddness since finding out with certainty that the girls weren’t coming to the cabin.

By the time they reach the lakeside, Steve was still quiet, still untalking, still rigidly upset, and when he slams the car door, storming off towards the beach, the only response Jonathan gets as he calls after him is a curt, decidedly cold sounding:

“Don’t worry about it, man. I just need to take a walk.”

\---

Jonathan had preoccupied his time during Steve’s sudden absence feeling altogether confused by his behavior. He’d been acting weird all morning, but that sharp dismissal as the other tore towards the beach was nothing short of _dickish _and it left Jonathan with a bad taste in his mouth.

He told himself he wouldn’t let it bother him (Steve, despite his forthcoming changes since high school, had always been sort of an asshole at times) and he spent the afternoon wandering the woods around the cabin with his camera instead. And while he succeeded in taking numerous interesting photos, he ultimately failed in distracting himself, because he was _still_ bothered by Steve’s behavior some hours later.

When he finally returned to the cabin clearing, the sun was hanging low in the sky, setting the glassy surface of the lake on fire in shimmering shades of orange and red. He finds the cabin empty, but another six pack of beer from the fridge is missing and it doesn’t take much thought to figure out where Steve might be.

Perched on the end of the dock, Steve sits with his back to the lake’s edge, his feet dipped low into the cool waters. Topless and slightly sunburnt, Jonathan can only guess how long he’s been sitting there, and when he sits down next to him, Steve barely stirs.

Instead, he pulls a can of beer from the plastic six pack ring and wordlessly hands it to Jonathan before taking a sip of his own. They sit in silence for a couple of minutes, neither of them speaking, neither moving, and distantly, Jonathan can hear the quiet lapping of the lakewater pulling at the sands of the shore and the lone call of a warbling loon.

It’s peaceful almost, but in the back of Jonathan’s mind he can’t forget Steve’s visible distress from earlier. The look on his face and the sudden coldness, and of course, that dismissive _I just need to take a walk _before he disappeared down the shoreline.

Now, Steve seemed less closed off, but Jonathan couldn’t help but to feel wary, the other’s continued uncharacteristic quietness setting his skin on fire with an irritating nervousness.

“Hey, Steve—,” he tries, searching for their own brand of personal normalcy.

Almost instantly, Steve cuts him off.

“—Truth, or dare,” he draws out lazily, and Jonathan blinks, responding with an automatic, albeit confused: “Dare.”

Steve seems to perk up a bit, a small smirk playing on his lips before he lets out a quiet exhale.

“I dare you to jump into the lake,” he teases, and Jonathan huffs, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Fuck that,” he tells Steve evenly, and Steve just smiles raising his beer can high.

“Penalty for refusing to do a dare or answer a question is that you have to finish your drink,” he declares and Jonathan huffs again, but chugs his beer anyways to the mirrored smile of Steve’s.

As he sets the can down empty, Steve hands him another one, popping the tab with a small hiss. It’s a nice thing to do, Jonathan thinks. A thing that friends do. A thing that’s normal and easy and considerate, and it bothers Jonathan more than he wants to admit because Steve is acting like nothing is wrong, like he didn’t just disappear for the afternoon in an unsettling display of quietness, the lines of his body rigid and stiff and eyes distant in the same way they had been distant that afternoon in junkyard.

Even now, he doesn’t know what to make of it.

“Truth or dare,” Jonathan then asks in turn, and Steve hums next to him, popping out a lazy sounding, “truth.” Jonathan’s stomach pulls tight and he feels his eyes flutter shut, but he’s really just tired—and he thinks that maybe this isn’t something he can just forget. Steve blocking him out like that felt _wrong _and even if he knows that both of them are the type of people who appreciate silence over prodding, Jonathan can’t offer him that if he doesn’t understand.

“So...why’d you get so upset earlier?" he asks quietly, and there’s an instant annoyed click to Steve's teeth as Jonathan watches his lips press thin and he swallows back the remaining bottoms of his beer can.

“That’s such a cop out,” Jonathan says abruptly and Steve sighs, setting the can down empty.

“It’s not an easy question,” Steve says through a sigh, and the fragile normalcy is gone, drank away with the emptiness of Steve’s beer. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

Steve’s voice is calm but misleading. Terribly collected, almost like he’s trying too hard and pretending that everything is fine. He’d been acting weird all day—from his constant sighing by the lakeside, to his nervousness following his phone call to Robin—and the way he speaks now makes Jonathan feel momentarily anxious, as he is reminded of all the things Steve used to say, implicitly or explicitly. Things like the _I’m better than you _attitude he used to wear like his stylish jackets, or his smirks in the hallways at school that were a constant reminder of the gaping maw of social status that divided them. In the grand scheme of things, Steve’s treatment of Jonathan in high school doesn’t really matter these days—Steve is different now, and so is Jonathan—and both of them have come a long way. But the way he speaks now is a call back to that, and Jonathan thinks very quietly, very sharply that he just might hate it.

Instead, he tries for a shameless shrug, a placating compromise, and utters a quiet: “_Fine_.”

It’s a nod to Steve’s feigned nonchalance—if Steve isn’t willing to be fully honest with him, then Jonathan is more than okay in returning the same unmitigated dishonesty.

Next to him, Steve sits with a freshly lit burning cigarette perched on the tip of his lips and the look he shoots him feels sharp and cold. His dangling bare feet kick at the lapping water of the lake beneath them on the dock and they brush against his ankles.

“Oh, don’t give me that thing where you_ shrug_,” Steve says, taking a heavy drag of his cigarette and glancing at Jonathan with another _look._

And Jonathan almost wants to laugh because Steve calling him out for being dishonest with him was terribly ironic. On a consistent basis Steve too failed at being honest, especially with him, and he wonders if Steve can see that.

Instead he just shrugs again and Steven squints, kicking him gently in the shin with his wet foot. It hurts a little bit, but he knows Steve didn’t really mean for it to. The water below them splashes as Steve’s foot swings back in front of him again and Jonathan growls, nudging Steve in the shoulder. It’s a silent request, an unspoken _stop that_. Steve does so and lets out a small laugh, light and easy, but it feels wrong somehow. Fake. In fact, he knows it’s fake. Then, Steve pulls the cigarette from his lips and flicks the remains of the burning butt into the lakeside, a faint sizzle hiss rising up as it hits the surface.

“Don’t give me that thing where you lie, then,” Jonathan then counters. It’s the first time ever that he’s had the courage to call him out on it, and his stomach pulls tight, unsure if it’s the right decision.

Instantly, Steve stiffens, pushing himself upwards from his casual slouch on the dockside and he runs an uneasy hand through his hair, thinking. His eyes flicker to the burnt out cigarette butt floating in the water, moving slowly with the ebb and flow of the slow-moving lakeside. It’s barely visible in the darkening skies, the sunset casting dark shadows across the water.

“It’s...hard to explain,” Steve says with a small exhale, and Jonathan thinks he sounds wet again. Defeated. “If I do, I’ll sound like an asshole.”

Jonathan almost feels bad—he knows somewhere deep down that he shouldn’t have said what he said—but he also doesn’t get it. He doesn’t _get_ Steve right now, and he really wants to, and he just wishes, like really _wishes_ that Steve would trust him.

“At the beginning would be a start?” he tries again.

“Man, you’re such a smartass—,”

“—and you’re deflecting,” Jonathan cuts him off, feeling mildly irritated now.

Steve grits his teeth together and Jonathan watches as his fingers clench tight.

“It’s nothing man. Rich kids just have rich kid problems. Don’t worry about it.”

It’s a low blow and Jonathan is tired and he doesn’t know what to say, or how to say it—but he’s _just_...tired of it. Of all of this.

“That’s such _bullshit_, Harrington," he suddenly snaps.

The name—the sound of his last name— a name that Jonathan hadn’t spoken in weeks, causes Steve to still. Through the anger of his teeth, Jonathan watches as Steve closes his eyes and sighs _again_—a grating breathy exhale that heaves when Steve’s shoulders fall, and then suddenly he’s pulling himself up, the lines of his limbs rigid and tense. He tugs his shirt back on in one furious motion and grabs for his shoes that are sitting next to his empty beer cans.

As Jonathan watches this, he knows with absolute certainty that gnaws at the pit of his stomach and sends a coldness rushing through his limbs that he’s made a mistake. Courage, he thinks, does not always guarantee a lack of conflict and Steve’s quiet anger has Jonathan feeling as though he’s beginning to match.

“I’m freezing,” Steve then says teresely. “And you know what—,”— Steve glances down at him, his eyes dark and lips drawn thin—“—fuck_ this_, I’m going to bed.”

“_Steve—,_” Jonathan calls after him, but Steve keeps walking, shoving his hands deep into the depths of his pockets. Jonathan blinks and in a moment of exasperated panic, he scrambles up after him, his hand pulling tightly on the curve of his shoulder. He doesn’t get to hide this time—he was done with hiding. Done with falsities and fakeness and pretending and feelings that he couldn’t quite explain and—

Surprisingly, Steve stops, but he shrugs Jonathan off of him in a hummingbird quick flinch that causes him to recoil. Then, Steve turns on his heel and Jonathan can’t help but to think that it's the most resigned he’s ever looked—a sad, tired face that doesn’t match the anger in his voice—and Steve, he realizes with a painful acuteness, is about to crack.

“_Fine_,” he says, and Jonathan can hear it: the break in Steve’s voice. It’s a quiet explosion of feelings, and Steve goes from being exhaustively put out to dangerously angry, his eyes hard like the feeling in Jonathan’s gut. “I’m jealous of you, Jonathan. I’m really fucking _jealous._ Is that what you wanted to hear?_” _

And Jonathan just blinks at him, because he was expecting this—this anger—but he doesn’t understand Steve's reason, not really—and Steve just lets out another, long exhaustive sounding sigh, pressing his face into the cup of his hands, the anger fading as fast as it had bloomed.

"I don't..._what?" _Jonathan manages. Steve? Jealous of him? _How?_

“I…" Steve begins then stops again, letting out another heavy exhale. "You’re leaving.”

Jonathan opens his mouth to say something, but then finds himself falter—he still doesn’t get it—and his confusion, he thinks, must be plainly visible because Steve tosses his head back and lets out another small sigh.

“You’re _all_ leaving,” Steve says again, as if this somehow would make things clearer, and when Jonathan _still_ doesn’t get it, Steve bits his lip, his brows knitting thickly between the bridge of his nose. “I feel stuck, Jonathan,” he admits too quietly, his voice laced with a muted panic, as if saying the words out loud were altogether too much and almost painful. “I wasted every chance I ever got to do anything _good _with my life and it’s not like I can complain about it, because _I’m _the one who fucked up in high school.”

Oh. And..._oh. _

This...this wasn’t about Jonathan going to school. This was about Steve. And how he _wasn’t _going to school with them.

“_Steve_—,” Jonathan tries feeling utterly and absolutely _stupid_, but Steve shakes his head, cutting him off.

“Lemme finish, man,” he pleads and Jonathan just nods, waiting in the dusk for Steve to continue.

“I didn’t really care before," he begins again. "About lots of things. Like what I was gonna do with my life after highschool...about jobs and dreams and all that adult shit you're supposed to have all figured out. But then I met Robin, and…" he falters, as if he doesn't quite know how to explain himself. "I just. I love Robin," Steve quietly breathes. And he sounds lost—so painfully lost and Jonathan’s chest aches and he feels _bad_ because he’s the one who forced Steve to talk about this. "She's my best friend in the whole entire world,” Steve whispers. “And after this summer, I...I’ll have _nothing. _I’m losing her, and everyone that's ever liked me for _me. _And that... includes you."

"We…” And Jonathan’s voice wavers—a small crack in his former confidence—and he knows whatever he’s about to say won’t make anything any better. “We won't be gone forever," he finishes softly and Steve scoffs, letting out a loud, ugly snort.

"Maybe. Maybe not," he spits harshly. "But in six weeks from now, Nancy will be at Penn state, Robin’s going back to Julliard, and you’ll be at NYU. And are you really gonna wanna come back to Hawkins after that? Because I know I wouldn't. And this weekend alone with you has been _so hard_ because—," He abruptly pauses, looking terribly conflicted and pained before letting out another anxious exhale.

And Jonathan is listening—really _listening_—and Steve opens his mouth as if he wants to say something important, something that needs to be said—but then he closes it, swallowing back an empty, too scared tongue.

"I can’t even feel sorry for myself,” he starts again evenly, his previous thoughts pushed to the wayside. “Because if I really wanted to, I could go push pencils at my dad’s real estate company for the rest of my life. But it’s like...fuck, man! I didn’t think things would turn out like this. And you..._you_…”

“Steve—,”

“—you're like Robin,” Steve exhales and his eyes squeeze shut, as if every word he wants to say but can’t is still stuck there somehow and quietly killing him from the inside. “It’s like I said before,” he breathes, full of self-deprecation and wetness, and slowly, he opens his eyes. “Stupid, whiney rich kid problems.”

Jonathan blinks and feels like he’s been punched straight in the gut, the overwhelming implications of Steve’s quiet implosion hitting him like a strong wave. He knows he should say something—anything, really—but instead, he just looks at Steve, really _looks—_and when he still doesn’t say anything, trying with a quiet franticness to figure out what it was that Steve had wanted to say, and what he had, and what he didn’t and ultimately, what all of this meant, Steve sits down on on the edge of the dock again, burying his face in defeat into the bend of his knees.

“I’m so _stupid_,” the older other boy mutters, and Jonathan shakes his head, sitting down next to him, his eyes distantly tracing the curve of the sun, dipping low below the horizon.

It snaps Jonathan out of his state of shock and he sharply shakes his head.

“You’re not stupid, Steve,” he quickly defends for the better lack of anything else to say, but when he looks to Steve, his knee was shaking restlessly again and his eyes were squeezed shut. Steve, it seemed, hadn’t heard him.

“_Steve_,” Jonathan tries again, and he sits down next to him. Automatically, he finds his hand on the curve of his knee, gently cupping it to stop the shaking. “It’s not stupid. _You’re_ not stupid.”

“Well fuck man, it _feels_ stupid,” he eventually says, eyes refusing to meet his own.

A moment of silence passes, then another.

“Have you...ever thought of actually leaving?” Jonathan then gently asks. He’s still trying to figure out what he should be saying, and how to say it, but this he thinks, seems like a step in the right direction.

Steve nods emphatically, lifting his head.

“All the time. Remember when you showed up at my house and I was sporting a fat lip? I had just told my dad I wanted to see if I could try a community college in Chicago near my aunt.”

Jonathan frowns, an unsettling heaviness forming in his gut.

“And it turned into...that?”

“Yeah,” Steve nods bitterly. “He told me to _‘get real’_. That if I was serious about getting my shit together, I’d quit my job at the video store and come work in his office.”

Jonathan bits his lip.

“I know your dad is a shitty person,” he starts slowly. “But...why wouldn’t he want you to go to college?”

Abruptly, Steve lets out a sharp, painful sounding laugh.

“This probably isn’t going to come as a surprise to you, Jonathan,” he says. “But I’ve never been that smart. Maybe if I tried a little harder I could have gotten better grades, but for a long time I simply didn’t give a shit about school. And my dad had all these delusions that I’d be going to like. Yale. Y’know—some Ivy League school. And I never really wanted that. I just wanted to play basketball. But I wasn’t even the best at that.”

“I never watched you play,” Jonathan admits with a small, sheepish shrug, “But I’m sure you weren’t terrible.”

At this, Steve allows himself a small chuckle.

“No,” he hums. “But it wasn’t like I had talent scouts lining up to get a shot of me.”

Then: “You remember your graduation night? And that conversation we had in the bed?” he asks, tone infinitely more serious.

Jonathan just nods.

“That was the first time I felt like I really understood you,” Steve quietly admits. “Like that maybe we weren’t so different, despite the fact that we never really got along or that I sort of kind of hated you for dating Nancy for the longest of time. But I totally _got_ what it was like to be pressured into shitty expectations that you never really wanted.”

“Your parents,” Jonathan says knowingly.

“I was their only kid and like, you know. Supposed to be perfect. Match the fancy Italian drapes and the glitzy designer crystalware my mom likes so much. Only...I wasn’t. And_ uh,_ yeah.”

“Your hair doesn’t really match the pastel carpets either,” Jonathan adds wryly and Steve snorts.

“Shut up, man—you’re not supposed to make this funny!”

“Sorry,” Jonathan murmurs, but he doesn’t feel too bad—Steve was smiling again, and it makes him feel pleasantly warm.

But he gets it, he thinks.

He gets Steve. For the first time ever. He really, really gets him.

He doesn’t have a chance to think about this however, or what it even means to him, because suddenly Steve is standing again, rising from the dock in one quick pull.

“C’mon,” Steve says, and his voice still sounds breathy, but it’s less wet, less defeated. “I think I need something to drink.” He extends his hand down towards Jonathan and automatically, he takes it. His hand is still too big, Jonathan thinks, with fingers too long and his palm too wide, and there’s a weird scar on his thumb, but he takes it regardless.

And then a thought strikes him. A strange and unsettling and quite frankly overwhelming thought that sends his heart into overdrive as his mind races back to their conservation they had only minutes ago. To the thing he had been trying desperately to figure out but simply couldn't. 

But now. 

Now—

“Hey, Steve,” he nearly chokes out, and Steve hauls up him, his hand warm like summer. “Did you mean it?”

The other boy merely blinks, confusion tracing the browns of his eyes.

“Mean what?”

“That I was like...Robin.”

And there’s a second of silence—a mere blip really—and Jonathan can feel his heart pounding against the confines of his ribcage, so loud and needlessly noisy that he’s sure Steve can hear it too. It hurts, almost, and it keeps hurting until he watches Steve nod, a quiet, subdued, “Yeah, man,” escaping his sun-dry chapped lips, and the pounding stops. Jonathan, stunned and sharply breathless, can only nod a near silent, “oh, okay” in return.

And when Steve lets go, his fingers squeezing tightly against his own one last time for what seemed to be the shortest, but somehow longest second in the whole wide world, Jonathan could swear that he was actually, really, fully, and completely drowning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Sorry this took so long - things here in Canada have been weird with this whole global pandemic thing happening. I hope everyone is doing well wherever you may be, and that you stay healthy and safe! Silver linings are that because I've been laid off for work for three weeks, I can theoretically write more? Anyways, lemme know what you think and much love <3


	10. Chapter 10

The drink in Jonathan’s hand feels heavy and slow, like watching bad mistakes happen as you make them, like taking photos of a girl who wasn’t your girlfriend way back in the tenth grade, like falling head over heels for your former bully and trying miserably (and desperately) to pretend that you were more than okay with just being friends.

He thinks he should stop. Stop everything. He should put down his drink and turn off the radio playing its bad country music and announce that he’s going to bed. Only Steve smiles at him again, brilliantly and blindingly and bright and _warm_, and Jonathan smiles back like an idiot, the sticky liquid slipping down his throat in an easy, welcomed rush, clinging to his insides like poison.

He sets the cup down empty and Steve’s smile widens as he uncaps the decanter, filling Jonathan’s glass to the brim.

Jonathan again eyes the cup speculatively, as if considering for a moment whether or not the contents actually _were_ poison, before deciding that, _yes_, they were, but, _no, _he didn’t care.

He shouldn’t be enjoying this.

He shouldn’t be smiling back.

He shouldn’t be watching Steve watching him and he most definitely shouldn’t be drinking so much of this whiskey so damn fast.

He picks up the cup and takes another long sip, and Steve’s approval is near palpable, rolling off his sloppy, inebriated grin in broad, wide waves.

He wants to stop.

He never wants moments like this to ever end.

“So what about you?” Steve suddenly asks, filling up his own glass. He sets the bottle of whiskey down on the small coffee table in front of the couch with an overly loud _thud. _

Jonathan too sets down his drink and cocks his head to the side, not really understanding.

“What about me?”

Steve fidgets, pressing his fingers into the fabric of his shorts. He looks mildly uncomfortable, Jonathan thinks, but before he can coherently ask what about, Steve blurts out:

“About the gay thing!”

And—_oh. _Jonathan dips his head in sudden understanding, and he feels his chest fill with a strange, constricting sensation—it was different then the normal tightness he felt from when he was around Steve—and he realizes with a painful sort of fumbling that this is a conversation that was long overdue. He hadn’t even told _Nancy_ how he knew, and she out of all people probably deserved the explanation the most, given that he had broken up with her for that very reason.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” Steve abruptly adds and Jonathan quickly shakes his head, uttering a slightly slurred:

“No, it’s fine! I just...was thinking about how to tell you.” Because he doesn’t really know how. How to explain it, that is. He takes another long, unrepentant drink from his cup and as an honestly underwhelming wave of anxiety hits him, he feels his mind begin to buzz. This was okay, he thinks, because at least it made talking about the whole situation easier.

“At the beginning would be a start,” Steve grins and Jonathan rolls his eyes, punching his shoulder lightly.

“Dick,” he murmurs and Steve nudges him back, the drink in his hand nearly spilling as he does.

“You started it,” Steve reminds him and Jonathan exhales, realizing it was true.

“Only because you suck at telling me stuff?” he retorts boldly. He was drunk. Definitely drunk.

Steve simply hums, acquiescing a barely there nod and Jonathan accepts the small albeit near silent acknowledgement with a smile.

“So the gay thing,” Steve then whistles and oh, _right_—he was supposed to be telling Steve how he knew—and Jonathan takes in a deep, deep breath, setting down his drink again and his fingers clamp down onto the edge of the couch cushion.

“It was hard to recognize at first,” he starts off tentatively. He realizes it’s because he’s waiting for a reaction from Steve—gauging to see what he can and shouldn’t say—but Steve doesn’t seem fazed by the topic at hand at _all_ and rather, he lets out a quick:

_“Why?”_

“My dad,” Jonathan exhales heavily. And shit...why did he put down his drink? “He...I guess he always thought I was...soft. And weird. And you know. Not normal. I didn’t see it at the time, but I guess _he_ did.”

“Weird?” Steve pries.

Jonathan nods, his head dipping low again, but he feels assured by Steve’s even sounding interest, even if his voice was noticeably slower sounding.

“Yeah,” he breathes, fumbling for his drink again. “I, uh...didn’t like sports. Or, you know—any of that typical ‘guy’ shit.” He pauses briefly, thinking and unthinking quietly—about Steve, and his dad, and high school, and his mom, and his brother, and of course Nancy, and when he finally stops thinking, he lets his mouth run wild. “And this is your parent, right? You want them to like you,"—he thinks to being seven or eight, of his parents' and the fighting, and his name being used as the weapon between them. He thinks of all the times his dad sighed loudly and muttered not so quiet words of disapproval under his breath, of his searingly mocking reaction when he joined the photography club in ninth grade versus the going to football tryouts and he blinks—"So you don’t think about how fucked up it is that he made you try your first beer when you were like. Seven.” And he didn’t realize it, but a bitter sounding laugh had escaped his lips. “_Or,”_ he adds, somehow still smiling, “That he screamed at you when he made you help fix his _stupid _car because you were nine and you didn’t know what a combination wrench was.”

“_Shit_,” Steve whistles.

“_Yeah_,” Jonathan laughs quietly again, but he feels okay somehow. Slow and warm and sticky like the alcohol, but definitely okay with this. Vaguely, he recognizes that he’s never really told this sort of stuff to anybody before, but if Steve could have the courage to spill his guts while near sober on the dock earlier, then talking about buried childhood trauma while five or six drinks deep should be a walk in the park. “And then for my tenth birthday,” he adds suddenly. “He made me go on this _shitty_ hunting trip.”

He swirls his drink in his hand, watching as the contents slosh messily within the cup before taking another sip.

“I didn’t know you hunt,” is all Steve says, and he too takes another drink.

“I don’t, really,” Jonathan tells him with a careless shrug. “I mean—I’m okayish at shooting, I guess. My dad made me practise firing pot shots at beer bottles in the backyard all the time. But it was another one of those things that I didn’t really have an interest in. And then he made me kill this rabbit—,”

He’s rambling, he realizes. None of this really had anything to do with how he knew he was gay. He blinks dully and sets down his drink.

“_Made_ you?”

“Yeah,” he exhales quickly, and _shit,_ his face felt warm. Really warm. He should stop now, he thinks. None of what he was about to say was really important, not in the way he meant it to be, but his mouth kept moving and the words kept pouring out. “I...shot this rabbit and I couldn’t stop crying. For like, an entire week. All of it just came out. Badly. And mom was so _pissed_ with him and I think he was really disgusted with me.” Jonathan finds himself laughing again, despite none of this being remotely funny, not even a tiny, little bit. He also realizes this is the most he’s ever told Steve about himself, _ever_, and a voice in the back of his mind wonders if it’ll somehow change things, or make Steve think differently of him. Because all it’s doing right now, he thinks, is solidifying every single rumor about how _trashy_ his family was—how poor and shitty and awful they were made to be around town—but he really hopes it doesn’t, he wishes. He really hopes Steve just _understands. _

“_Anyways_,” Jonathan finishes, his words slipping fluidly off his tongue and missing more than a few consonants. “After that, he stopped making me fix his stupid car, or shoot cans, and sip his beers, and he started calling me names instead.”

He blinks again, feeling saliva pooling thick in the back of his throat and lets out a heavy exhale. Shit. All of everything he had just said felt like _a lot._ Slumping back into the couch, Jonathan dares to catch a glance of Steve. The other hadn’t moved: he was still sitting a few inches away from him to his left, his drink still held solidly in his hand—almost fully gone now—and still watching him.

“Like...what?” Steve then asks, and Jonathan finds that his voice sounds quiet, too quiet almost, as if he was almost scared to hear Jonathan’s answer. He tries not to let it bother him and finds his fingers digging deeply into the rough material of the couch cushion beneath his hands instead.

“_Fag_,” he breathes out harshly, and the word feels heavy in his mouth. But that's not all. Not really. Then, unfeelingly, with his eyes focused on staring straight ahead towards the kitchen sink (because he doesn't think he can look at Steve when he says it): “Homo. Pansy. Queer. Idiot. Failure. Fuck up—,”—he could go on, and on and on—,“—Just...just _lots._”

And next to him, Steve stays silent, just silent, just listening, eyes cast downward in his lap and Jonathan remembers briefly, very quickly, how once Steve had called him that one word—queer—years ago, and he swallows back the acid surging in his throat.

“I didn’t really care,” Jonathan quietly admits when the silence lingers, cut thick by the fuzzy din of the radio. “I mean...I did. Like I said: it hurts when your own father can’t even stand to look at you. None of that mattered though, because we got into this huge fight—,” his voice hitches and he blinks furiously, trying to push back the memory of the blinding anger that had suddenly pushed it's way up from his guts, helped by the warm embrace of the alcohol. “My dad slapped Will for drawing something stupid—I think it was a flower—on the back of his cheque book. He was eight. So I threw a punch at him, and for the next two years all we did was fight.”

He doesn’t mention all the times his dad tossed around his mom, or the way she cried at night in the bathroom with the shower running, thinking that the sound of the water would hide her sobs. He doesn’t think he can get into _that_ right now. It was enough, achingly so, just to mention Will.

He grabs for his drink on the table and then, seconds later, the rest of it is gone. He doesn’t, however, even have a second to decompress or consider the gravity of his own words when Steve’s teeth click tight, a sharp _tch _echoing in the fuzzy silence.

“What a piece of work,” he spits in disgust, and Jonathan feels it—the weight of telling things he had kept secret for so long, buried deep like gut rotting poison—dissolving into nothingness.

And Jonathan just hums, nodding briefly and feeling lighter—much lighter—than he had in a long,_ long_ time.

“He was something,” is all he can admit. Just something. A nothing. But something. And sharply, almost painfully, he realizes he never really quite answered Steve’s question to begin with—of how he knew he was gay—and feels his cheeks grow warm, fresh embarassement washing over him.

“_Shit_,” he mutters, and Steve raises a brow, nudging his shoulder softly.

“What?”

“I just...I just realized that didn’t really explain things,” he quietly laughs. “About being gay,” he adds just to clarify.

“Oh…”

“Yeah. _Um_. Yeah.”

“Is there a footnotes version?” Steve teases.

Jonathan nods, feeling his cheeks grow hot again, but promises himself it doesn’t matter. That Steve didn’t judge him for his dad or his family, or even during that first drunken confession way back in June, and that he wouldn’t judge him now.

“It was hard,” he tries to say evenly, even though he knows his words are messy and wet. “To accept, that is. Because of my dad,”—because,_ right,_ he realizes—there _was_ a point to telling Steve about Lonnie—“But I think the best way to describe it is as a feeling.”

“A feeling?” Steve parrots.

Jonathan nods, leaning back into the couch, his palms pressing flat against his thighs.

“Yeah. Like looking at someone and knowing that you want them. And I knew I never really looked at Nancy in the way that I should—like I knew that she was pretty—

“—super pretty,” Steve interjects, and Jonathan nods.

“Yeah, but even though I knew she was pretty, I didn’t feel like it was enough...if that makes sense. But I thought that maybe someday it would be?”

“_And?_” Steve prods.

Jonathan let out a short, small laugh as he feels his teeth chew errantly at the flesh of his lower lip.

“_And..._it never was. But I knew _something_ was wrong, because sometimes I'd look at guys, and…”

He trails off, unsure of how to finish his long winded explanation of how _oops, I realized I was gay. _

“And what?” Steve parrots again, and Jonathan almost wants to laugh again, but doesn’t.

Instead, he simply _looks_ at Steve—_like, c’mon, really? What happens when _you_ look at a pretty girl?_—and the other eventually mouths a silent _‘oh’_, suddenly, _finally,_ getting it.

There was a beat of silence, a quiet moment of introspection where Jonathan watched Steve sit and simply _think _before he suddenly perked up.

“So who was it, then?” he asks.

“Who was _what_?” Jonathan blinks.

“You’re first crush.”

And all of this just seemed...normal. Because between them was nothing and everything. Silence and understanding. Acceptance and the chatter of a casual conversation that Jonathan honestly didn’t think would ever go so casually. And mostly...mostly it was Jonathan sitting next to Steve in a quiet, overwhelmingly welcomed _relief, _because his own mother didn’t even know he was gay (or maybe she did—she probably did) and his own poorly, potentially unrealiably crafted narrative trying to make sense of it all, but Steve—

Steve did.

And Steve didn’t seem to mind it. Instead, Steve was just asking him oh-so casually, oh so coolly who his first crush was and Jonathan feels a tinge of embarrassment before muttering:

“Joanie Richards from 5th grade.” He pauses for a moment, screwing up his face before adding: “But if I’m being honest, it was Freddy Fitzpatrick. Joanie was just the girl I told people I liked so I wouldn’t seem weird.”

“Freddy?” Steve repeats in disbelief, but he’s smiling thickly as if Jonathan had just told him _the_ most interesting piece of gossip.

“Yeah,” Jonathan squirms. “He...was nice.”

“_Hm_.”

Then:

“Freddy was a nice kid,” Steve slowly acquiesces. “But he had that weird imaginary friend, remember?”

And Jonathan feels his face flush hotly, embarrassed by the memory, but nods in agreement—it was true: Freddy _did_ have an imaginary friend until like...the 7th grade. It was an embarrassing crush to have, even if he couldn’t help it.

“Well what about you?” he suddenly asks, if only to distract from his overwhelming awkwardness.

“Me?” Steve grins.

“Yeah...first crush.”

“Holly DeLuca,” he rhymes off easily. “Long brown hair, perfect smile, tiny waist, perky breasts—,”

If Jonathan wasn't already blushing he was now.

“—I get it, I get it!” Jonathan nearly chokes, cutting him off. “_Jesus_, Steve,” he exhales.

“Don’t like all the dirty little details, _hm_, Jonathan?” Steve grins and his smile is almost predatory.

“_No_, I mean—how would you feel if I started talking about…”—he struggles momentarily, trying to think of something—_anything_—that would elicit the same level of discomfort he was experiencing from the other boy—,“Ass,” he decides upon and tries not to let himself be swallowed up by the lingering embarrassment of talking so candidly about his sexual preferences.

“_Ass_?” Steve laughs. And oh _no_—Jonathan could tell _instantly _that he had made a mistake. “I mean, little known fact, Johnny-boy, but I’ve always been something of an ass man myself, so at least it’s something we could talk about together.”

“Oh _god_,” Jonathan just groans, but he’s laughing too, and sinks deeper into the couch. Why was this so funny? “We are _not_ doing that—,”

“—wait, wait,_ shhhhh!_” Steve cuts in abruptly. Both boys still and Steve’s eyes dart wildly to the radio, still humming quietly in the corner. “Is that..._Kenny Loggins_?”

Through the crackle of the fuzz, Jonathan strained to listen. It...it was.

It was Kenny Loggins. And not just any Kenny Loggins song, but _Footloose. _

Steve turns to Jonathan and eyes him deviously, his grin so large it nearly swallows the entirety of his gleeful face. And without saying _anything_, Jonathan knew exactly what it was Steve was about to do.

“_No_,” Jonathan mouths, unable to contain his own giggling. “Steve—_don’t_—,”

Without another word, Steve had jumped off the couch, drunk and nearly falling face first over the coffee table. He slid, sockless, towards the radio and cranked the volume dial, the crackly, vaguely warbled voice of Kenny Loggins’ _Footloose _flooding the cabin.

Oh, and he was dancing again. Badly_._ In fact, it was quite possibly even _worse_ than the time he had danced to it alongside Robin, his moves wildly out of sync with what Jonathan _knew _was the supposed dance number he was attempting to mimic.

“Jack, get back, come on before we crack!” the other boy sing-shouted.

“_Steve_,” Jonathan tries, but it was _hard_ to admonish someone for singing so _terribly _when all he could think about was how ridiculous they looked.

“Lose your blues, everybody cut footloose!”

“You look—,” he wheezes, and shit, he really had to stop laughing, “—please, just stop!” he laughs.

In response, Steve merely raised a lone brow and with three shimmied steps, he had reached the couch. Jonathan didn’t even have a chance to react—or a choice—when Steve Harrington, once the epitome of _popular_ and _aloof_ and totally _too cool _to be caught dead with Jonathan Byers, pulled him off the couch, grinning ear to ear, and dragged him onto the cabins' makeshift dance floor.

“Steve, I don’t dance—,” he tries to protest, and _god_ did his chest ever hurt.

“You do now,” Steve quips, grabbing his other hand. “Besides, Robin isn’t here and I need a partner. C’mon, man!”

And maybe it was because he was drunk. Or maybe it was because Steve’s smile was gorgeous and infectious and despite _hating_ dancing, or never really having danced in his whole entire life, it made him suddenly want to as well. Or _maybe_ it was because he really,_ really _liked Steve and if Steve wanted him to dance, then he was going to do whatever the other boy damn well wanted him to.

That once fundamental part of his personal, moral code where he swore he would _never_ do something as _silly_ as dancing with would-be friends in the Harrington’s living room?

Absolutely and completely shredded, like his former image of Steve Harrington somehow being _cool._

“Steve,” he gasps, nearly colliding with him for the umpteeth time. Steve, beyond a small, telling grin, didn’t seem to react to his name and spun Jonathan backwards again. “This is _stupid_,” he manages to choke out between their cojoined laughing.

“Stupidly fun,” Steve corrects and he lets go of Jonathan’s hands, shimmying backwards in an honest to god _terrible _looking shuffle.

“You have no rhythm!” Jonathan points out through a half smile and Steve just snorts.

“Join the club, Johnny-boy, ‘cause neither do you!” And Steve stepped forward again, grabbing at his hand again and furling him left in a half spin before drawing him back in. “Besides,” the other grins, his face close, too close, really, “What does it matter? It’s just _us._”

And _oh._

There it was again.

The all consuming tightness in his chest and his lungs turning to cardboard and the breathlessness and _none of this was fair. _

Steve releases him again and Jonathan tries to breathe. Just breathe. He needs to sit down, he thinks. Instead, he stumbles backwards and finds himself leaning against the backside of the ratty couch, watching Steve slowly tire himself out, the wave of his arms pulling at the fabric of his shirt and exposing flashes of skin with each and every step. He shouldn’t be attracted to this, he thinks. Not to Steve dancing like an idiot to _Footloose _out of all songs. He shouldn’t think it was _cute_ the way he was smiling at him and how his hair flopped around and even the way he closed his eyes at some points, rhythmless and drunk and yet still trying to move along with the crackly sounding music.

None of it, he thinks, was ever going to be fair. _Ever_.

The song ends and Steve turns off the radio, breathless and sweaty and the way he smiles at Jonathan honestly hurts. Just hurts.

“See?” Steve says, his voice smooth and slow and smug. Noticeably different than sober Steve but still jarringly attractive. He sidles up next to him, his weight falling onto the backside of the couch. “That wasn’t so bad.”

But the embarrassment is back—the painful self-awareness of his crush, amplified in its intensity by how stupidly drunk he was—and Jonathan finds he can’t bring himself to respond fully, fearful of the words that might slip out of his mouth. Instead, he just nods, his head nodding low and Steve lets out a loud, gleeful sounding snort, his arm landing heavy on the curve of his shoulder.

“You’re cute when you’re embarrassed,” Steve grins, and this is it: the moment he actually might die. Because Jonathan can’t breathe. He really can’t. And he’s thankful Steve can’t see his face, not really or fully, because he’s not sure how he could stand to look at the other without his hair hiding how goddamn red he was.

“_I_—I,” The word slips out of his mouth before he can stop himself, slippery and half stuttered.

_I like you, _his brain wants to scream.

But he doesn't.

Instead, Steve claps his shoulders, squeezing him tight, and as always, stupidly and painfully unaware of everything he was doing to him.

“You take things too seriously sometimes,” Steve hums. “But I guess that’s what I like about you. C’mon man, it’s late—we should go to bed.”

And then, Steve pushes off the edge of the couch, hand abandoning Jonathan's shoulder in an unaffected and effortless wave, and he grabs for his pack of cigarettes, heading towards the door.

“You want one before we sleep?” he asks, and Jonathan forces himself to look up, blinking once, twice, and swallowing thickly.

“No,” is all he says, and his tongue feels deadened, pooled with all ashes of lost words and abandoned courage and the utter selfishness of ever thinking he could do this. Just being friends with him. With Steve. Steve Harrington.

Across from him, Steve just shrugs. Then, he pushes open the old screen porch door and disappears into the night.

The cool air from outside sweeps across Jonathan's feet and he blinks, inhaling a sharp, painful breath before squeezing his eyes shut, trying for calm and coming up short. Because his insides still feel like poison and he still can't breathe and everything hurts and he doesn't want to ruin this and—

It wasn't supposed to be like this, he thinks. _It wasn't. _The thing is, he doesn't know how to stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what to say other then I guess Steve is actively trying to kill Jonathan at this point ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	11. Chapter 11

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting when Steve came back inside from his smoke, but the other boy crawling blindly onto the bed next to him wasn’t it.

Because really, there was no need for it. There were two rooms and two beds and the two girls, with an absolute certainty, were not coming.

He thinks he should mention this. About the girls, that is.

He doesn't.

Instead, as the mattress pulls under Steve’s sudden weight, Jonathan feels himself stiffen and he involuntarily lets out a tired, breathy exhale. He’s tired and with a calculated sort of weariness, he knows that he doesn’t have the energy to be dealing with this right now. With Steve. And everything—including his own muddled, frayed emotions—that came with him.

“Hey, Jonathan?” Steve slurs.

Jonathan stirs, shifting in the bed and trying quietly for a desperate soft of evenness. For the type of calm he used to find through the loudness of his music or the messiness of sorting through endless boxes of photographs, hours lost in distraction. For a way, right here and now, to crush his anxiety and absolute tiredness, to end the synapses in his brain firing off into overdrive. It doesn't work and he feels sick to his stomach instead. His brain screams at him that he should have stayed still—he should have held his breath and kept his eyes shut—but he knows Steve and he _knows _that he is a persistent bastard and pretending to be asleep or otherwise would have been pointless.

“Yeah?” he ends up whispering. Steve crawls up the length of the bed and flops down next to him, his body altogether too close for comfort. Like the night before, he smells of a strange mixture of cool, fresh air and the familiar pungent smokiness of cigarettes that was not so dissimilar to the way his own home smelt. It might have been a comforting scent, something soothing, if not for the sudden thickness forming in the back of his throat, or the way his skin crawled with a bursting unpleasantness, setting his brain on fire with an inundated sense of panic of how _Steve shouldn't be here right now. _Of how Steve needed to _leave._

"I was thinking about before," the other boy begins and Jonathan just nods, not really sure if Steve can see him, not really caring. He can smell the heavy whiskey on the other's breath—the smoke—and his stomach pulls tight, ending in a surge of chest crushing anxiety. "About first crushes," Steve continues. "I...wasn't fully honest.” There’s a slow giddiness to his voice. A noticeable tentativeness. “In the 3rd grade, I always thought Freddy was super cute, too. But then he started talking to that imaginary friend of his all the time. And, _uh_...yeah."

He sounds sheepish, Jonathan thinks, and unsure. But the weight of his words are still heavy, and their implications send Jonathan's already frazzled nerves into a hot, white space, one where his mind goes completely blank.

"He had a nice smile," Jonathan lets out automatically—almost too quickly—and he feels Steve twist towards him, a quiet, breathy laugh escaping the others mouth.

"_Yeah_," Steve agrees warmly, and even though Jonathan can't see him, he can tell by the tone of his voice alone that he too was smiling, maybe just in just a small way, but it was definitely there. Then:

"But I don't think that really counts," he laughs. "Liking someone because of their smile, that is. Like man, imagine?"

And—_oh_. There it was. The perusal disappointment that seemed to be becoming a secret, one-sided habit between them.

Jonathan doesn't say anything and instead lays stiff in the dark, his blank face blinking slowly at the ceiling above them as he tries to understand all of what Steve is trying to tell him, or if any of what he was saying means anything at all. He doesn't disagree with him or tell him that he's wrong. He doesn’t say that he's taking the cowards way out again. Hiding behind words with would-be meaning, only to suffocate them with placating ‘_but_’s. He doesn't tell him that the first thing he found himself falling for with him was his smile, or how he slowly began to notice the subtle differences between them all—the grins and the smirks and wildly genuine bright ones—and how he hated it when those smiles were flashed meaninglessly. Instead, he sighs softly, squeezing his eyes shut, thinking about how six weeks ago, all of this was so, _so _different. Steve shifts again, murmuring a breathy: “_Hm?_” and Jonathan blows out all the air held deep in his lungs, before offering a quiet:

“You have a nice smile too.”

His mind swims, wading through his denials as he tells himself that it’s a thing friends do. Friends compliment one another, he thinks. And that you can like another person, _just_ for their smile.

“Yeah?” Steve just asks—and he can hear it: the quiet but not unkind conceit warming of his voice. Like he didn’t really believe it, but was pleased that Jonathan had said so.

“Yeah,” Jonathan repeats breathlessly.

And he feels like he's breaking. His skin burning and his teeth clenching and his voice trying _so_ hard not to scream and—

And for just a moment, he feels it again. Fingers, less quiet and less hesitant, brushly gently against his own. A slightly calloused thumb drags slowly across the cool skin on the back of his palm, tracing a slow circle across the length of his knuckles before cautiously seeking his fingers. Then, less confidently and noticeably trembling, they curl into his own. And it feels…nice, he thinks. Just nice.

And even though this isn’t fair—none of it is—and it hasn’t been for a while, Jonathan let’s it happen.

He blinks and Steve exhales—a quiet, shuddery sound coming deep from his chest that seems far from okay, but Jonathan doesn’t ask. He can't and he won't. They were both drunk. Drunk, and stupid, and all of his courage had already been spent hours earlier and now he was just…

Tired.

Instead, he breathes. Just breathes. Because this, he thinks, is the best it’s ever going to get.

He lets his fingers curl back—just for a quick second, really—as he tries to memorize this exact moment. Of Steve's long fingers tangled thickly against his own, of his whiskey breath hot against his shoulder, of the quiet shakiness of the others breathing.

All of it was incomprehensibly painful.

"Steve?" he whispers, trying one last time for truth—for honesty—only he doesn't get a response—just the sudden, expected rigidity of the others fingers and the reminder that his barely-there touch was probably just a mistake—and Jonathan sighs.

Seconds later, Steve let's go. His hand falls limp against the space in the mattress between them and Jonathan shuts his eyes.

Next to him, Steve doesn't move, but there's a sound—like a quiet hiss or the muted hitch of a too big exhale—and Jonathan turns over, pretending that all of this was normal despite the overwhelming but dull awareness that it was anything but.

\---

When he wakes up, he’s still half drunk. He doesn’t know what time it is, only that it was early, and the distant chirping of the birds in the forest feels like a jackhammer being pounded into his head.

And for a moment, there is nothing—just a fuzzy blankness in his mind as he tries to think—and, _oh_.

He remembers.

Steve liked Freddy Fitzpatrick, but only for his smile.

He blinks, thinking that maybe this should mean something. That maybe he should feel something more than just a slow albeit steady anger burning in his gut—a reminder of all the unfairness in their relationship—and how he wishes, right then and there, that Steve had never thought to open his stupidly kissable mouth last night. It had given him a sharp stab of hope, only for it to be cut out of him mere seconds later. At the moment however, he’s almost too sick to move and so he thinks of nothing instead.

But then he remembers the second thing: that Steve is laying complicitantly in the bed next to him, and the anger returns; a quiet sort of one, like smothered embers or half burned out coals being stoked by a bellow.

He inhales deeply and tries to remind himself of the things he's promised.

Then, his mind flips and suddenly, he thinks of Nancy.

He thinks of how he loved her, but not really being able to do so in a way that he wanted to. Of the promise he had made to himself after months and months of _trying _and _failing_ to somehow make it work. It had started with the novelist, James Baldwin. It was a truth that he hadn't even told Steve. There had been this book and he doesn’t even remember why he was reading it, or when, but there had been this quote taken from an interview with the author, placed squarely on the very first page.

_If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see, _it had said.

And he thought it was weird that this quote about love was the preface to a collection of highly charged political essays—like it didn’t really fit, or maybe it did and he just wasn’t _getting it—_but in the end…

In the end, he had stared at that page for a very long time.

The book didn’t belong to him—it was from the Hawkins Public Library—but he ended up ripping out that page and pinning it to his wall, just above his desk.

And sometime later, he asked Nancy to come to the park downtown outside Melvald’s and they sat on the same bench where they sometimes ate icecream together and he thought about that quote and he thought about love and he thought about Nancy—Nancy, Nancy, Nancy—and he wondered if she would hate him for it.

He never got a chance to explain it to her. About James Baldwin and the quote, that is. Things had happened so quickly, so suddenly, and he remembers realizing with a stomach gnawing guilt that he couldn’t face her mounting disappointment after he told her he was gay, and so he dealt with it like how dealt with most things in his life: he simply got up and walked away.

So he broke up with Nancy because he loved her. And now, as he’s laying in bed next to Steve, all he could think about was that stupid quote again. And even though he’s not sure he really loves Steve (because everything inside of him was all mixed up—all sticky and painful and hurting), he wonders if he should do it.

Make Steve conscious of the things he didn’t see, that is.

“Hey, Steve,” he tries in a moment of weakness, and his voice sounds like a frog, croaking and hoarse. Next to him, Steve remains still.

He knows he shouldn’t be mad at him.

Steve wasn’t a bad person, his brain sings. He wasn’t. He just wasn’t on the same page as him and it wasn’t _fair_ of him to think of him as the villain, because it’s not like Steve _asked _for this. It’s not like Steve _knew_ how Jonathan felt, or how his actions affected him, and as hard as that was for him to accept, he also knew he couldn’t keep doing this.

He curls in on himself and he feels the pulsing waves of a hangover roll over him in one, long continuous motion—his own private hell and price to pay for drunkenly _dancing _with Steve—and then groans, running a fuzzy tongue alongside the inside of his mouth. It still tasted like whiskey—_gross_—and flippantly, he sits up. It was a bad idea, and a rush of blood shoots upwards, pounding, pounding, _pounding _in his head.

“Hey, _Steve—,_” He gives him a light shove this time and Steve stirs, rolling over and pulling the mess of sheets closer to his face. Otherwise, he remains silent.

Today, they had to drive home, Jonathan thinks. Today was the end of whatever _this_ was.

“Steve,” he tries again, tapping him on the shoulder. “Steve, get up.”

Initially there’s just a groan, but Steve fully reacts this time. He too sits up, blinking languidly, and then in an equally petulant act of betrayal, he grabs Jonathan by the arm and forces him back down into the mattress. The sudden movement is enough to have Jonathan nearly throwing up.

“_Jonathan_,” the other mumbles quietly, irritation lacing his voice. He still hadn’t released his grip on his arm and he sidles closer, reaching across his chest. Jonathan’s breath hitches, his heart pounding wildly, but then he realizes that he’s reaching for something and his gaze follows the length of Steve’s arm to find it blindly swiping at the crooked, wooden end table next to the bed. “Look at the clock,” Steve groans.

Jonathan cranes his neck, catching sight of the slow ticking bakelite clock with it’s chrome inlay face held weakly in Steve’s fingers. The faded, green fluorescent hands steadily ticked towards 6 am and Steve let go, the clock tumbling out of his grasp and onto the bare, wood floors. The ancient bakelite cracks and when Jonathan looks over to it, he can see pieces of crumbly black peppering the floor.

“Go back to sleep, Jon,” Steve murmurs. The grip on his arm loosens and Steve falls back flat onto the bed. He does not, however, move back to his side of the bed, and the final nail in the coffin comes when Steve curls closer, resting a scratchy, smoky smelling cheek on the curve of Jonathan's shoulder.

He couldn’t do this.

He just ...couldn’t.

Half-drunk and half-angry, Jonathan shoves Steve off him.

And after that, everything happens very quickly.

“I can’t do this anymore—,” To his own ears, his voice sounds distant and choppy, like listening to himself over a static-laden phone line. Steve, still half asleep and probably also still half drunk too, sits up again, blinking dully in the face of Jonathan’s sudden emotional outburst.

“Jonathan, what the _hell_, its 6 am, man_—,”_

“_—_I can’t be friends with you anymore.”

He spits the words out in one quick rush, like a too bloated damn bursting in the springtime, and instantly feels his veins run cold.

There’s a sharp suck of air and followed by Steve’s sudden coughing as he lets out confused sounding:

"_What_?"

And then, silence.

Jonathan can already feel the weight of regret from the words he had spilled, but he doesn’t try to correct them. Instead, he watches as Steve continues to blink at him, his mouth opening slowly and then seconds later, closing again, like he’s not really sure what to make of Jonathan’s statement, or what to even say, and when he runs a shaky hand through his messy, flattened hair, Jonathan just rolls his eyes, crawling out of the bed.

“Hey, Jonathan, _wait—_,”

And Jonathan can hear it—the clear confusion in the other boys voice, the sudden exasperation—but he doesn’t care anymore, he doesn’t _care_, he just needs to _leave,_ and it almost doesn’t register with him that Steve too had leapt off of the bed.

“This is bullshit, man, what’s going on with you?—”—and he can feel Steve’s hand pulling on his shoulder, his confusion morphing into hackle raising incredulousness—and he wants to scream at him it’s _not_ bullshit, what’s_ bullshit_ is their friendship—but instead he spins on his heels and does the one thing he knows he shouldn’t.

It’s a quick kiss and it’s not at all nice in the way that it should be. Beyond the initial shock, there’s a moment where Jonathan can feel the entirety of Steve stiffen beneath the press of his lips. It lasts one, two, three—three seconds, and when he pulls back, Steve stumbles. He falls ass first back onto the bed and Jonathan can see it in the other’s eyes—the initial comprehension of what just happened—and as Steve continues to simply _stare_ at him, mouth ajar, Jonathan feels himself sighing again, his eyes near painful in how quickly they roll.

Then:

“What the _hell_ dude?”

Steve’s voice is practically a stutter, eyes wide and the lines of his body seizing in a noticeable panic. Jonathan doesn’t react and instead bites down on his tongue in an attempt to quell the overwhelming urge to vomit. Because right now, Jonathan is suddenly and completely—

Something. He is suddenly and completely something he cannot name. It is a burning in the tips of his fingers and a punch to the pit of his stomach and the resurrection of all the soul-crushing words between them he had swallowed like they were sustenance, needily and daily, and always.

He has made a mistake.

And now—

His lungs feel like they are stiffening into cardboard, and his mouth is dry and his throat is tight with words he first swallowed weeks and weeks ago. _I won’t ruin this. I won’t. _

He is _such_ a stupid liar.

“That’s why,” he eventually manages, voice quiet and eyes glued to the floor. “That’s why we can’t be friends.”

And Steve just _looks _at him. Just looks. He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t tell him this is okay, or that _sorry, I don’t feel the same_, or that _dude, that’s great! _He just looks.

Then, he’s scrambling off the bed in a frantic tumble of too many steps and not enough calm, pushing past Jonathan and escaping towards the lake.

Jonathan hears the screen door slam shut, left hanging without the close of the latch and he thinks about how Steve Harrington was the best friend he ever had, but also the worst—and he knows that it’s over. He doesn’t need to swear it.

He looks down and sees that his fingers have curled into fists without him noticing and the thick heat in his gut has somehow compacted itself into—it...it’s like the sun had been plucked from the sky and shoved down his esophagus, only the sun is too big so the all the fire and fuel had been squeezed into a ball the size of a quarter, and every particle is a thousand times more concentrated to make up for the down-size.

It’s...he...can’t breathe.

He can only take short breaths with his new cardboard lungs, and his exhalations are quick and harsh, like that one time where he thought Will was dead, like actually dead, and—

He is practically panting, he realizes, with watery eyes, but he can’t stop it—he can’t stop it because the almost too familiar heat has found its way into his brain and his fingers are tingling and his teeth are clenched, air whistling through them like a song that isn’t as driving as the pulse he can feel in his ears—

He falls flat on the bed, hands curled against his chest, crying. Outside, the birds chip and there is the sound of the wind passing through the trees with the water lapping at the lakeside. Jonathan nearly vomits and chokes on a sob instead.

The part of his brain that is still functioning recognizes this as panic.

And later, after he wakes up again—more sober and less angry, more calm and less okay—he thinks about how nothing feels better; everything only feels worse.

This, he thinks, wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

But in the very least, it had stopped.

\---

They pack the car in a weird, lengthy silence, any words spoken between them short and clipped. Words like: _“Yeah—,”, “—okay,”, _and, _“—Sure,”, s_eem to make up the bulk of their conversation. Steve keeps his distance as he re-shutters the windows and Jonathan continues to keep his head low, stuffing the trunk with their belongings.

The drive back to Hawkins is equally as quiet. The radio plays its bad country music, picking up a clearer signal as they speed past Freemont, and eventually as they head south, Steve changes the station. Jonathan hates the music—it’s some vaguely pop-filled station with the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Phil Collins—but it’s better than talking. Because with his stomach aching and mouth still dry from a lingering hangover, he's not sure he’s ever felt so lost.

Three hours later, when they finally pull into the Byers’ driveway, Jonathan tries again for what he thinks might be the very last time.

“Hey…” he starts off, and from the corner of his eye, he catches Steve flinch, his fingers wrapped tightly around the curve of the steering wheel. “So, listen, Steve...I’m sorry that I—,”

“—don’t worry about it, man,” Steve cuts in, the words _kissed you_ never even getting a chance to be born.

Jonathan dares to look at Steve, just for a second, because his voice feels alienating and _weird. _Steve isn’t looking at him, he realizes, but his leg is shaking and there’s a pull to his lip that he vaguely recognizes as Steve’s own personal brand of worry. It makes Jonathan feel _tired_, because for the first time ever he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

He tries again, letting out a long, lengthy sigh.

“So are are gonna talk about—,”

“—no.”

And that was it.

The anger from that morning returns just as quickly and as violently as it had subsided and Jonathan rolls his eyes—he can’t help it—and he slams the door when he exits the car. Silently, he collects his things from the trunk and he doesn’t bother to watch as Steve reverses the car, the engine humming distantly with a low, slow fading purr.

Instead, he walks into his house, not looking back, not feeling sick, not hurting, and not wanting to wish he could turn back time.

He ignores his mom and her panicked, _“Jonathan, sweetie, what’s wrong—,”_ when she catches him stomp through the kitchen and he locks himself in his room, dumping his bag on the floor near his desk. In a rush, he fiddles with his stereo, shaky fingers fumbling with the nearest cassette tape he can find and when he looks up, his eyes catch sight of it:

_If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see, _the black, steady print burning holes into the depths of his chest.

The swell of Lou Reed’s _Vicious _fills his room and he tears the paper off the wall, crumpling it into a furiously tight ball and he throws it towards the trash.

It misses, and Jonathan lays down on his bed, tightly closing his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ლ(ಠ_ಠ ლ) 
> 
> (I'm so sorry for this - I promise things will get better).


	12. Chapter 12

It starts with a phone call.

Three days past the weekend, Jonathan calls Nancy.

His hand is closed, grasped firmly around the yellowing curve of the old rotary telephone as he restlessly waits for someone on the other end of the line to pick up. The house is quiet—Will is asleep and so is his mom—and Jonathan listens to the dial-tone ringing, eyes unblinking as it hits it’s seventh—no, eighth, ninth,_ tenth_ ring and—

“—Hello?”

The voice is quiet and sleepy but it’s unmistakably her’s.

Nancy.

Jonathan exhales a quiet sigh of relief and let’s himself feel small and guilty for calling her this late, just for a second, before remembering why he did so to begin with. To apologize and...well...

“Nancy?” he speaks quietly into the receiver, gently—and Jonathan can hear it: the quiet hitch in her voice—the barely audible surprise—followed by a thick sounding exhale. He’s almost half expecting her to hang-up on him (and knows he would deserve it), when she lets out a soft-sounding:

“Hi, Jonathan.”

She sounds exactly the same, Jonathan thinks. Exactly the way he remembers her. As if they hadn’t just not talked to one another for six whole weeks. As if the last time he had seen her face wasn't that day in the diner with Steve after the graduation party. It calms him because even if everything between them was different now—all weird and distant and strange—her voice was still Nancy’s voice and he's thankful for it.

Between them there is a pause and Jonathan just listens, concentrating on her breathing and hanging on to each and every exhale. _Nancy is still Nancy_, he tells him forcefully; Nancy is quietly waiting, quietly expecting, and Jonathan tries to think of all the things he wants to to tell her—of all the things he wants to say—and instead collapses into the nearest chair by the kitchen table instead.

“Jonathan, are you still there?” she asks, tones of cautiousness lacing her otherwise sleepy sounding voice.

“_Yeah_,” he quickly exhales, but doesn’t mention his quiet panic. “Yeah, I’m here. Sorry, I’m just trying to think of—,”

“—what to say?”

And he can hear it: just the smallest traces of the old way she used to speak to him—the teasing admonishment lingering in her voice—and Jonathan nods, biting his lip.

“Yeah.._I_...” he tries again, stumbling over his words. “I know I messed up—but, I...”

And _shit—_why was this so _hard_?

“—Jonathan, it’s fine,” she cuts in quickly, headstrong as usual. “We just needed..._space_.”

There’s no meanness to her voice. No resurgence of anger. No calculated sharpness. Instead, Jonathan can feel the warmness of her voice and the quiet reassurance of her unspoken forgiveness. Time had given them...understanding, he thinks, and his chest pulls tight, filled with all the sudden longing and unspoken realization of how much he’s missed her.

“I know,” he eventually says and Nancy just laughs, a quiet, familiar trill and Jonathan feels his lip quirk up before he abruptly frowns, forgetting himself. Things between them still weren’t quite right yet. “But I should have called you since then," he amends.

“Jonathan...”

“No, listen Nancy—I just...I keep messing things up," he practically whispers. "First with you, and now...with Steve. And I just want…"—he pauses, swallowing thickly and squeezing his eyes shut—"I just want things to go back to _normal_.”

It feels like a lot to say—a lot to unload—and he feels like it comes out all wrong, all at once and all too much. There’s a second where he feels vaguely wet, the heaviness of his own words dragging him down and leaving him quietly overwhelmed. He’s not even sure where he should begin—to start unpacking things and explain what he really means—when Nancy swoops in again, like always, there to save the day.

“What happened with Steve?” she asks softly, like she _knows _what he really needs to talk about, and Jonathan feels the too familiar tightness in his chest shift, a floodgate of emotions surging up and into his throat and spilling off his tongue.

He’s not sure how long he talks to her and Nancy patiently, if not attentively, listens. He tells her about working at the Hawk, and Steve-and-Robin, but more importantly _Steve, _and the first movie they watched together and how nervous he was. Nancy laughs at this and tells him _sorry_—she should have warned him Steve was secretly a _Footloose_ fan: they saw it together in theatres shortly before they broke up and he didn’t shut up about it for _weeks._

“Really?” Jonathan asks, and Nancy just laughs.

“Really—he kept saying he hated it, but he wouldn’t stop mentioning it. Sometimes Steve is so oblivious.”

And Jonathan just chuckles a quiet: "_Yeah_," in agreement. Sometimes he really was. Then, less confidentently, he tells her about them getting high together. He thinks that maybe she wants to say something about this (there’s a slight noise that emanates from the receiver—a hum of disapproval), but if she does, she keeps her mouth shut and encourages him to continue. So he talks about the junkyard and driving around endlessly and listening to bad music together and Steve hating Hawkins and _oh_—his dad. About how much of a dick he was, or rather is, and _right_—that's why they went to the junkyard the first time. Nancy sounds sad when he talks about this, and there’s another soft sound of sympathy_—_a quick suck of air—followed by Nancy’s quiet: _“I...didn’t realize how bad things were.”_

"Neither did I," Jonathan admits, but he’s not done yet.

So he tells her about the cabin, and the three-hour drive up the interstate and how Steve is—or was—he’s not quite sure—a different person now. Or maybe he’d always been like this and he never really saw it before, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s messed things up bad—like really _badly, _Nancy. He tells her about the lake and old dock and the beds and getting drunk and Steve telling him he was like Robin and waking up angry and, _and—_

“Jonathan—did you...do you have a crush on Steve?” Nancy carefully asks, cutting in with all the softness she can manage.

Jonathan exhales, cradling the receiver heavy to his ear between before letting out a defeated sounding:

“..._yeah_.”

And then, before she can digest this, he adds:

“I kissed him. Sunday morning at the cabin. And he—_I_...we haven’t talked since.”

There’s a noticeable quietness to the conversation following this. There’s no more laughter. No more silly anecdotal stories involving Nancy’s experiences with Steve. No more quiet hums of approval or disappointment. Instead, she listens mutely as he tells her about Steve disappearing, practically shoving him out of the way as he ran out of the bedroom. He tells her about the drive home later. He tells her about the silence and how he _tried _to make things better—about the awkwardness in the driveway—and how now, three days later, everything was still all fucked up, still all undone, and how all of it just…hurts.

“I really liked him, Nancy,” he confesses quietly into the receiver, saying it out loud for the first time ever. “And now it feels...it feels like _us_ again. The way we were when we broke up. Only it's Steve and it’s so _stupid_ because we weren’t even dating.”

For a moment, Nancy doesn't say a word and there’s nothing but silence again. Jonathan just waits, patient but defeated, and realizes she is thinking. He can almost see it: the many faces of Nancy Wheeler as she purses her lips together in that endearing sort of way he used to love about her as she thinks about the proper words to say and how to say them. Of a plan of attack, or a crazy idea, or of the sometimes unwanted advice she seemed to hand out like candy to kids on Halloween.

But none of it comes—none of Nancy’s typical hard-pressed judgment or quickly plotted turnabout solutions to questions never asked never come.

Instead, after what seems like the longest minute of all time, all she whispers is:

“I’m _so_ sorry, Jonathan.”

And he knows it’s not for a better lack of words. Nancy _always_ knew what to say or how to fix things, and her decidedly short condolences weren't out of spite or some long held grudge from their early summer breakup. Her words are short and quiet because she knows—and so does Jonathan—that there was nothing really she could say—nothing that she could offer to fix, or words to somehow make things better—because all of it was _blindingly_ clear: Steve didn't feel the same way Jonathan did. His actions proved it. And Nancy—Nancy Wheeler—his trusted sounding board, friend, ex-girlfriend, first love, last love, knew it too.

Blinking rapidly, Jonathan lets out a long, heavy sounding sigh.

“It’s fine,” he then tells her softly, because he didn't call her just for pity. “I just...needed a friend to talk to. We’re still…” He pauses, feeling suddenly unsure of himself, as if they hadn’t just spent the past two hours talking on the phone. "We’re still friends, right?”

“_Of course_!” Nancy suddenly gushes—and there it is again: the spark of the old way she used to speak with him. “It’s 2 a.m. Jonathan—if we weren’t I would have hung up on you hours ago.”

"I'm glad," he confesses. And he really is. Even if he doesn't know what else to say. He was never really that good with explaining himself, but with Nancy it never seemed to matter. So he doesn't say another word and he just keeps on listening and just like that, Nancy starts talking about how Steve is an idiot, and that he shouldn’t have run away, and _god, he can be such an asshole sometimes!_

At this, Jonathan sort of laughs, sort of nods, and it makes him feel better (sort of) even if her words aren’t the solutions or fix-its that he was looking for. He's not even sure himself of what he wants (for this to have never happened? To be friends with Steve again? For Steve to actually _talk_ to him again?) but in this exact moment, Nancy's riled but well intention razing of Steve Harrington makes him feel better. Sort of.

Eventually, Nancy tires herself out, the clock on the wall reading close to 3 a.m., and by the dim, half burned out light of the kitchen stove, Jonathan makes his last confession.

“I’ve missed you,” he murmurs quietly.

“I’ve missed you, too,” Nancy returns without missing a beat.

Jonathan just hums, the light above the stovetop flickering.

"And Jonathan?" Nancy adds, her invisible, sleepy smile practically radiating through the phone. "Call me more often, okay? Promise me that."

He tells her he will and when he hangs up, he knows that this promise is something he won't break.

\---

He finds himself at work a lot because his mother still hasn’t let it go. Him coming home in one of those _moods_ again a week prior, that is. Everytime he sees her, there’s a tremor in her smile and a sadness to her eyes as she quietly tries to work up the courage to ask him to sit down at the table and Jonathan _knows_ she’s not going to let it go.

The thing is, Jonathan doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to have to. He’s already spilled his guts to Nancy in a moment of personal emotional cathargy, and trying to reexplain the situation to his mother seems _tiring_. Not only that, but it would force him to open up a whole _new_ conversation about—oh right, his crush on Steve—who was decidedly _not_ a girl. And despite knowing that his mother would probably be more than okay with it—the whole gay thing—it’s not something he has the energy to deal with right now.

Because he is tired. Just so, _so_ tired.

So instead he spends a lot of time at work, or pretending to be, and when he’s not doing that, he’s talking to Nancy on the phone or eating together at the diner. He’s surprised how easy it is—to fall back into old habits, that is—and falling back into his routines with Nancy comes second nature to him. Between them it almost feels natural, even _if _there is the occasional hiccup where they’re both reminded that they aren’t a couple anymore despite the occasional assumptions from others that think they are again. It does make him feel guilty, however. Occasionally, he’ll catch peeks of Nancy’s quiet anxiety—the subtle way her teeth will pull at her lower lip, or the even way she’ll focus herself, eyelids fluttering shut. It only ever happens when someone comments that it’s _nice_ to see them back together again and even though Jonathan makes every effort to correct them, he still feels _bad_.

Quietly, he wonders if all of this—if all their conversations and hour long lunches and walks near the quarry—are all too much, all too soon. The guilt he feels only serves to be compounded when he wonders at times if Nancy still wasn’t fully _over_ it (over them), because he’s more than well aware of how cruel it is being forced to pretend that you’re more than okay with just being friends with someone.

Whenever he tries to ask her about it though—if she’s okay with it, with them, and more importantly _him—_it only serves to remind him of how stubborn she could be. Her haughty sighs and indignant glares are the same too (if there was something he wished had changed, it would be _this_) and it makes him think better of ever asking again.

Instead, he just listens. Nancy has a lot to say, it seems. A whole summers’ worth of stories and it’s like she’s trying to make up for lost time. She tells him about _everything_—about the annoying new secretary at the local paper who seems to pity her for somehow _not _having a proper desk job, like as if her writing local op-ed pieces for the paper was somehow something to be pitied. Jonathan can only laugh, because Nancy really hasn’t changed, not even a tiny, little bit. He finds out the family reunion in Toledo was _terrible_, and that her uncle, who she describes as a slimy, overpaid asshole working for General Motors was surprised she got into Penn State on a full-ride scholarship and _oh—_her cousin is going there too. He was the one who paid for her family's plane tickets, she explains, because even though they could have driven, he _loves _to flaunt his wealth.

She’s also leaving soon, he discovers. Two weeks past Saturday, because she wants to get set up in the dormitories early and figure out the campus layout and maybe explore the city a bit.

“What about you?” she then asks, voice full of precision. “What’s happening with NYU? I know before we...well, you didn’t know if you were going or not,” she finishes awkwardly, but not unkindly.

“I...took out a loan from the bank,” he freely admits, taking a bite of his sandwich and Nancy quirks a brow but keeps her mouth shut. “I, _um_....I’ll probably get my Mom to drive me up there the last week of August. Classes start September 7th.”

Then, Nancy hums, like she’s considering admonishing him for heading up so late or maybe for the loan, but then her tongue clicks once as she sucks on her straw and she pops out an even sounding:

“Well, I’ll call you when I get to State College and give you my address. Maybe you can come visit sometime.”

Jonathan just nods, but secretly wonders if she really means it.

Sometimes though, Nancy asks about Steve. It’s always precluded by a long, drawn out, “_so_,” and when his response never changes (“No, we still aren’t talking”), Nancy sighs and rolls her eyes. Jonathan always takes this moment to change the subject. It works sometimes, but sometimes he’s forced to remember how prying Nancy can be—how doggedly persistent she is—and today is one of those days where she can’t leave well enough alone.

“_So_ Steve," she starts off. "Like what? You haven’t seen him _at all?_”

“No,” Jonathan tells her flatly, but this in part is a lie. Five days past returning from the cabin, Steve and Robin had walked by the theatre atrium. Robin had waved animatedly through the wide, double doors, but Steve had caught sight of him, shoved his hands in his pockets and stared down at the sidewalk instead. Robin had stumbled in her step at this and when Steve didn’t stop to even _consider_ going inside, Jonathan watched with an aching sort of pain as she quickly jogged to catch up with him. He could only imagine what their ensuing conversation was like.

He doesn’t tell Nancy this.

“I could talk to him,” Nancy suddenly suggests, fingers delicately wiping at the paper napkin to her left. “He...well, I know it’s weird,” she offers, looking far more serious than she needs to be. “But it’s not fair that he’s acting like this.”

“Please don’t,” Jonathan sighs. “It’ll only make things worse.”

“Jonathan—,”

Quietly, Jonathan sinks into his seat, eyes quickly drawn towards the window and Nancy sighs again.

“_Fine_,” she concedes, but he can tell she’s angry again simply by the way she grips her drink, her pink painted nails pressing thickly against the cup.

Later, as they bring their bills up to the counter, Nancy’s anger has almost completely dissolved until they catch sight of him:

Steve, with Robin in tow, approaching the diner in their _Family Video_ shirts.

Nancy hadn’t even finished paying for her meal, but there’s a frantic moment where Steve sees them through the glass of the restaurant door window. Jonathan blinks and watches as a fresh wave of anxiety bursts from the pit of his stomach as Steve _immediately _turns on his feet and abruptly walks away. Robin, visibly confused, raises her hands in the air, her mouth moving a mile a minute—likely a string of baffled expletives, if Jonathan knew Robin at all—and then, as a pair, there’s a brief thirty second stand-off. Jonathan just watches, feeling the hurt in his gut sinking as Steve points wildly towards the diner. Robin points back, then at Steve, and _oh_—Steve looks angry, he thinks. He's never seen him look at Robin like that. Nancy, returning from the register with her change in hand witnesses the tail end of it: of Jonathan standing frozen near the door and the pair in the parking lot arguing. Then, before she can do anything, Steve gets into his car and Robin follows suit.

They peel out of the parking lot and Jonathan turns to Nancy. Her lips are pursed tight and there’s a hardness in her eyes not so dissimilar to the way she had looked at him at Tammy Clearwater’s party that night. Nancy, he realizes, was no longer angry, but absolutely furious.

“I’m going to kill him,” she suddenly seethes, and Jonathan just sighs, craning his neck back towards the ceiling.

“Don’t,” he tells her, trying for evenness, but he just feels tired. Worn out. Exhausted. It's something he can't even hide anymore—not from Nancy, at least.

“Jonathan,” she bites out, “He can’t—,”

“_Don’t_,” he repeats and between them there is nothing but finger curling frustration and the unspoken reminder that between both of them, as separate, respective people, they were equally as stubborn when they wanted to be.

\---

He’s only half paying attention to the emptiness of the Wednesday afternoon atrium of the theatre when Robin walks in, an exhausted looking scowl sitting heavy on her lips.

This in itself isn’t unusual, but what makes him realize he _may_ be in trouble is because it’s _just_ Robin and Robin alone. No Steve. No Steve-and-Robin. Just Robin.

She makes a beeline straight towards him and her steady gait makes him think of Nancy—she has the same energy, the same determined glint set in the lines of her face—and abruptly, Jonathan pauses his task, setting aside his broom, and leans it against the counter.

For a brief moment, neither of them say a thing. Robin looks him up and down, then down and up again and Jonathan fidgets, unsure of what—if anything—he should say. He knows with a certain level of anxiety that Robin knows what happened between them. Robin—if Steve was to be believed—was his best friend, and something as monumentally dividing as Jonathan _kissing_ him was something friends would share, he thinks.

“What happened?” Robin suddenly snaps.

Or...not.

“W-what?” He thinks he might have flinched and Robin just huffs, pressing her cracked lips thin, and well—she didn’t look happy. She looks...not, angry he thinks. No. it was more an expression of exasperation? Or annoyance? Annoyed _might_ have been the right word for it, but he wasn’t really sure.

“Between you and Steve,” Robin clarifies, rolling her eyes and pressing a hand to her hip. "At the cabin.”

Jonathan blinks and blinks again and suddenly he realizes that _shit_, no—Steve _hadn’t_ told Robin what had occurred between. Instantly, the drowning feeling returns. Steve hadn't told her and he supposes that maybe he simply _couldn't. _He couldn't without revealing what Jonathan hadn't told her himself: he was gay. He blinks, not sure what to make of this and suddenly feels a sharp guilt for assuming Steve would have told Robin. Then, the tightness in his chest stabs at him: it was the same exhausting lung seizing breathlessness that he always felt around Steve, but only this time it was more frantic because there was no way in _hell_ he could tell Robin about what had occured between without bringing up unnecessary complications, such as—oh,_ right_, I kissed your best friend and _yes,_ I’m gay.

“It’s nothing,” he murmurs and goes for the forgotten broom, intent on ignoring her.

Robin, he reasons, isn't owed an explanation from him.

“Is that_ so_—,” Her voice sounds sharp, like shattered glass, and Robin grabs the broom straight out of Jonathan’s hand, propping it up next to her. Then, with her voice noticeably thicker, sweet like syrup instead of glass-like: “Steve never used to shut up about you, and now everytime I mention your name, he looks at me like I’m threatening to chop off his hair. And the _moping—_”

“—nothing happened,” Jonathan reiterates quickly again, but Robin’s eyes swivel faster in their sockets than Nancy’s when she’s in a bad mood. Jonathan can barely think of a proper excuse before he realizes the handle of the broomstick is pointed directly at his chest.

“_Both_ of you are lying to me,” Robin tightly clips out. Her voice, while decidedly sweet sounding, was misleading at best. Predatory may have been a better way to describe it. “And I’ve _tried _to get it out of Steve. Really, I have. But if I have to put up with him fiddling with the damn gumball machine at work because he’s trying—not so subtly, might I add—ignore me, for _one _more shift—,”

The broomstick moved closer to his chest—an unwavering threat to an otherwise pleasant sounding conversation—and when old Mrs. Hunter shuffles by the atrium doors of the theatre with her small, puttering dog, she pauses momentarily, peering inside. Robin just smiles at her, waving to the older woman while still holding the end of broom handle dangerously close to his chest.

“_Wave,_ Jonathan,” she instructs through the clench of her teeth, and Jonathan, for reasons unknown—or perhaps because he had a broom handle threatening to jab him in the gut—finds himself doing so. It seems to satisfy the older woman and her walk resumes, both her and her dog disappearing from sight.

Then, with Mrs. Hunter gone, the broom pokes into him—not hard enough to actually hurt—but Jonathan finds himself stumbling backwards towards the concession counter regardless.

He was suddenly very glad that Cheryl had gone on her break and wasn’t here to witness this.

“Both of you—,” she smiles tightly and Jonathan takes another step back at the sound of her fake sounding laughter. The broom in her hand drops to the ground as she runs a frustrated, shaky hand through her already messing looking hair. Then she takes a deep breath as she settles herself, her lips curling into that same deceptively calm smile she used whenever Steve said something overly oblivious around her—like she was _this_ close to strangling him—and she exhales again. “Are you _trying _to make me angry, Byers?”

“I—no,” Jonathan squints. Only Robin doesn’t relent and her smile was becoming less of a smile and more of a scowl. And while he doesn't really _know_ Robin in the same way he knows Steve, he's not sure he had ever seen her this...serious. “We just...had a difference of opinion,” he finishes quietly and hopes with every fiber of his being that his decidedly lame excuse would satisfy her. It doesn’t and Robin sighs deeply, pressing the tips of her fingers to the peak of her brow.

“A—_what?_”

She spits out the words like she doesn't actually believe him—like all of this was far too incredulous to have been caused over something as simple as an argument. He doesn’t even get a chance to explain himself when Robin shoots off again, barrelling forward like a shot from a gun.

"So, what," she then chides. "Steve found out you were being serious when you said you like art films? Or did you finally get sick of his lame taste in music? And yes, I know you hate his music because Steve tells me _everything _about you—like, _everything_. Do you know how many times I've had to listen to him talk about your pretentious books or equally pretentious taste in music? Because I swear to_ god_, Jonathan, that if this fight is over as something as stupid as _Journey_—"

And _oh_, shit—was that Cheryl?

Beyond the curve of Robin’s shoulder and standing outside the glass doors was his co-worker. She was talking to someone—a girl in a garish paisley printed blouse—and Jonathan knew he had to wrap this up quick.

“Robin—,”

“—and what do you even know about _Journey _anyways?”

"—Robin, listen to me—,”

“—and don’t even get me started on _The Cure_—,”

“—_I like Stev_e," he practically hisses and Robin stops, just for a second, before she huffs again, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, and so do I," she retorts flatly. "The earth is also round and the sky is blue. Any other incredibly _helpful _information you'd like to share with me today?"

"No, I mean—," and god, why was this even happening? He wasn't the one who had been a total and complete _asshole_ since everything that had happened. But any anger he may have felt was swallowed by his sudden embarrassment, because _fuck_—there he was again, thinking about that awful, terrible friendship ruining kiss. He just wants Robin to go away. Far, far away—and _no_, oh no: the girl in the paisely blouse was waving goodbye—but Robin is still snapping at him, still talking about Steve this, and Steve that, and Steve, Steve, _Steve, _and Jonathan feels his cheeks grow hot, wishing very suddenly, very desperately that the floor would open up beneath him and swallow him alive because he knows he's about to do something stupid, really, really stupid and—

"I kissed him," he blurts out, and hearing the words fall from his mouth feels like watching a trainwreck happen in slow motion.

Instantaneously, Robin's mouth slams shut before promptly falling open again and _fuck, fuck, fuck—_

Then, the door to the theatre swings open and in walks Cheryl, 5 minutes late from her break.

She waves to the pair, but neither wave back.

Instead, Robin leans in close, a furrow in her brow and in a not so quiet whisper she lets out:

"You..._what?" _

And there it is—the sudden dawning of realization on her face as she pieces together what all of this all means. He watches carefully as it happens and can see every pull of recognition, every stomach sickening line of confusion, every chest aching twitch of her lip. She shrinks backwards, as if burned, and _god,_ he was just so _sick _of it all.

He decides right then and there that he _cannot_ deal with this: Robin had her answer regarding Steve and _no_, it wasn't about fucking _Journey_.

There is a hot nothingness in his brain as he turns on his heels, walking quickly in the opposite direction. He doesn't know where he's going—the bathroom, the supply closet?—but he realizes it doesn't matter. Cheryl is there too—asking him stupid questions about the next showing in theatre four but that doesn’t matter either. Instead, what matters is the sharp pounding in his chest and the white fuzziness in his head and the whistle of his not so even breathing struggling to escape his teeth and—

He can barely hear her when Robin calls after him, a belated albeit frantic sounding, "Jonathan—wait!" swimming in his ears.

He ignores her.

Because this wasn't supposed to happen. He wasn't supposed to tell her.

He shouldn't have said _any_thing and wait—Robin wouldn't tell would she? Robin wasn't like that, he thinks desperately, Robin wasn't—

He turns on his feet and blinks.

There was no Robin. Just Cheryl and an empty atrium with the final, slow swings of the double wide theatre doors.

\---

The conversation with his mother happens next.

He knows he can’t avoid it forever, even if he wants to, even if he tries.

She corners him in the kitchen when he comes home late from the theatre in a mess of too heavily kicked off shoes and furiously tossed car keys. She makes him sit down, offering him a cup of black coffee because he’s too old for hot cocoa now—too grown up—and the weariness in her eyes makes him think better of shrugging her off for what would be the umpteetnth time in a week.

“Jonathan, sweetie,” she starts off gently. The sudden curl of her hand around his own feels foreign and clammy, and he realizes it’s been far too long since he’s talked with her—a whole summers worth of worries kept to himself—and so he gives into the touch, not even minding when she squeezes his fingers a little too tightly. “What’s wrong?” she asks him softly. “Tell me.”

So he does.

“I like someone,” he starts off quietly and his mother’s fingers squeeze tighter and Jonathan squeezes back. He hates confessing secrets, he realizes. Nothing good ever comes of it. He doesn’t ever feel any lighter. If anything, he feels heavier; panicked by the fact that someone knows the truth about him. Nerve-wracked and ugly. Guilty and shameful. Letting people in only makes him want to find a way out.

And all of this—

All of this week and everything.

All of Steve and Nancy and Robin, and now his mother…

All of it feels like it’s too much.

But he’s tired, he realizes, and it seems like he can’t keep any secrets anymore. They all just keep slipping out every time he blinks his eyes, too exhausted to hide it anymore, too drained to care.

“I liked someone,” he repeats again. “A boy,” he adds quietly, but he can’t even look at her, shame swallowing him whole. It doesn’t matter though, because her fingers still hold firm, still squeezing him tight, still warm and clammy and worried and he lies again, adding a soft: “But it’s fine.”

“Oh, Jonathan, _sweetie_—,” his mother hushes, and he can hear it: her total and complete acceptance, anchored in the heavy relief that his problems were _only_ something as manageable as a crush. “Is it…”

Jonathan blinks and squeezes her fingers back, nodding. He’s not sure if he can speak his name out loud. Not yet.

Because his full confessions are a long way off, he thinks, but it all has to start somewhere. Because there’s too many of them. Too many late nights talking to Steve on breaks at the theatre, and trips to junkyard, and long, endless drives in Jonathan’s car. There’s Nancy, and sad summer breakups followed by warm summer crushes, and the nasty bruises from bad fathers. There's Robin’s brashness and too much weed, and the wide, sometimes beautiful, sometimes sad smiles of too scared boys lying quietly in bed together, piled between the unspoken holding of hands. There was all of this, before the stupid came out, like Steve's drunken ramblings of the smallness of Hawkins and the hugeness of his own hate for his father, and finding potential happiness, dancing to Kenny Loggins.

His mother takes a sip of her coffee, her sad but understanding eyes watching him steadily over the edge of her mug, and silently, she nods back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve better be thinking long and hard about his actions and repent because the girls are back it looks like he's about to get murdered.


	13. Chapter 13

He’s half awake, half aware that it’s late morning and that he should have been out of bed hours ago when his mother knocks on his door.

Jonathan doesn’t move.

Instead, he just blinks, staring up at the ceiling and lets out a quiet groan.

“Jonathan—,” his mother’s voice trills.

It’s been days. Days since he told his mother about his crush on Steve. Days since Robin confronted him at the movie theatres. Days since he watched Nancy quietly calculate seven different ways in which she would like to eviscerate Steve for showing up at the diner parking lot and taking off like a bat out of hell.

What’s different now is that he’s no longer tired.

The tiredness, he thinks, has faded.

It has faded and slipped into the ashes of a once forgotten anger that he had forgotten he was capable of. It’s a type of anger that he has quietly kept in a check throughout the years, expressed only in small slips of lost composure. Biting down hard on his tongue and tasting blood whenever his father drunkenly berated him. Nostrils flaring as he steered his eyes low to avoid the juvenile comments of his classmates at school. Beating the ever loving _shit_ out of Steve in the alleyway that one time.

The tiredness has faded, he thinks, but the anger—the oft forgotten anger that he sometimes doesn’t know how to deal with—is back.

His mother’s knuckles rap against his door again, sounding off in three quick beats.

“Jonathan—there’s somebody on the phone for you.”

“Yeah, okay, I’m—,”

He sits up, running a hand through his messy, unwashed hair, his eyes searching the floor of his room for something to pull on. “I’m coming. One sec’.”

He nearly falls out of the doorframe, tripping over his pants and his mother directs him to the phone’s corded receiver laying on its side on the kitchen table. With a loud yawn, he brings it to his ear.

“Hello?”

At first, there is nothing. The receiver sings back to him in silence, an empty line that crackles vaguely whenever Jonathan twists the yellowing, cracked cord around his fingertips. He presses against the wall, eyes squinting closed—it’s probably Cheryl from work, he thinks, asking him to cover another one of her shifts—and he lets out another long yawn.

“Hey…”

Instantly, Jonathan feels himself stiffen and the yawn seizes in his throat. He nearly chokes on his own tongue when he realizes who the quiet sounding _‘hey’_ belongs to and instantly, he pulls back from the wall, taking a shaky, half thought out step.

He’s gone from feeling half awake and barely functional to just dizzy and nearly breathless in all of ten seconds.

The person on the other end of the phone line is Steve.

But—

He isn’t saying anything. Not a damn word. There’s just more silence. More vague crackling as the cord twists in Jonathan’s anxiously curling fingertips. More nothingness.

There’s a quick moment of relief. A small, almost guilty flood of emotions washes over him as his brain tries to reconcile with how _happy_ he is to hear Steve’s voice. That happiness, however, is quickly smothered by the caustic reminder of—_oh, right, Steve is a total fucking asshole. _The anger in his gut furls and unfurls, pressing hard against his throat, and he manages to ask in a very quiet and precise sort of way:

“So did you call me for a reason, _or?_”

More silence. A cough. The shuffling of feet. The emptiness of a static filled phone line.

Then:

“No, I just—,”

He is angry. Jonathan is so, _so_ angry, and it’s taken him up until now—up until this very moment—to realize the full extent of it.

“—well then there’s no point in us talking,” he snaps heavily, fingers digging into the hard plastic surface of the receiver.

“_Jonathan—_,” Steve suddenly grinds out. And he can hear it: Steve’s growing exasperation held tight by the grind of his teeth. And honestly? He _hates_ it. He hates hearing Steve’s voice crack with that undertow of sudden judgement, because really, it’s completely undeserved. Steve didn’t _get_ to be exasperated. Steve didn’t _get _to be the one who was mad.

“I gotta’ go,” Jonathan suddenly announces, voice tight and fingers shaking.

“This isn’t fair Jonathan—_you’re_ the one who kissed me—”

And_ holy shit_, Jonathan thinks, Steve sounds _angry_. He’s _actually _angry. Steve’s exasperation had been replaced by a cool hiss, the words clipped and dangerous sounding, and Jonathan feels like his lungs are on fire. If he wasn’t in so much shock right now, he maybe might have even laughed.

Steve didn’t...he wasn’t…

Steve didn’t get to be mad.

“And _you’re_ the one who was a total _dick_ about it,” Jonathan practically hisses. He can hear Steve’s sharp inhale, the awful sounding suck of air as Jonathan’s words spill from his mouth, quiet and purposeful and sharp. “Don’t forget that, Steve.”

Then, he slams down the phone, hanging up on him.

Less than thirty seconds later, it begins to ring again.

Jonathan wants to scream.

He knows it’s Steve. He knows. He knows, he knows, he knows, _he knows _and he doesn’t care.

Jonathan looks at the phone, quietly considering his options.

It rings and rings, and Jonathan feels his jaw clench tight as the anger practically explodes up into his head. He picks up the receiver, a frantic, half-garbled: _“Jonathan—,” _the only thing he hears before he very calmly presses his fingers down on the hook mechanism in the cradle, ending the call. A stuttered disconnect dial tone picks up and begins to beep from the receiver as he lifts up his fingers. Jonathan just sighs and drops the handset down roughly onto the kitchen tabletop, the cord left dangling tight from the adjacent wall.

\---

Steve tries to call back twice more before the day is out.

He tells his mother that he can’t talk to him, not bothering to care that Steve, in all likelihood, can hear him telling her to lie for him. Instead, he grabs the keys to his car and takes the longest drive of his life.

He drives down the old backroads beyond the interstate, watching mindlessly as trees and brush whip by in his peripheries and tries not to think about how he can’t even listen to half the music in his glove box anymore because it’s shit that Steve likes now. Listening to it in this very exact moment would somehow be _traitorous. _

There’s a half smoked, crumpled back of cigarettes shoved errantly in the cupholder between the seats too and Jonathan almost tosses them out the window before deciding better of it. He fishes out the contents instead and inside are three cigarettes and a half-smoked joint, tucked quietly away with one of Steve’s forgotten lighters.

The joint he thinks, will at least be useful.

He only stops when he reaches the county line. There’s no evidence of it or markers—no small sign declaring that this was the end of Hawkins county—just more trees and empty fields that stretch out beyond the dirt road and into the tree-specked horizon. He only knows that this is where it stops—where Hawkins ends and the unincorporated township of some forgotten backwoods farming community begins—because his father took him here to go hunting from time to time. He also knows that if he keeps driving, the roads loop back and then around, and eventually, he’d reach the interstate again.

In the distance he can see a farmstead and beyond that a rocky outcropping in a field next to where some cattle graze. He looks out upon the field, car idling in the vast emptiness of this nowhere land and he picks up the half-smoked joint, lights it up, and gets really, really stoned.

He’s not quite sure how long he sits there. Blinking and unblinking, thinking about how in a few short weeks from now, none of this will even really matter, because he’ll be _gone. _He’ll be gone beyond the county line and not just by a few short feet, but really, really _gone_—thousands of miles away, in a whole new state, in a whole new city, living a (hopefully) whole new life.

So he just sits there until the skittering uneasiness in his chest dissipates, until the uncomfortable crawling of his skin stops, until he realizes that all of this is somehow probably for the best, because _really: _what did it even matter? Even if Steve had somehow, by some small, faint miracle liked him back, Jonathan was leaving.

Their summer had been fun. It had been a wild ride of music and movies and cigarettes and beer: an unneat, but otherwise fitting ending to his adolescence. Steve had been everything he never let himself dream of having: drinking six packs of beer with stupid laughter and deep but somehow meaningless conversations, stoned by the lights of a heated, in ground pool. Steve had been the friend he’d never had in high school. The type of person who he only read about in books or talked about in magazines—that perfect, goofy companion who always knew the right things to say and when to say them—smiling effortlessly and endlessly and trying his _hardest_ to always make him laugh.

It was a shame then, that he had somehow developed a crush on him.

It was also a shame that he had somehow misread everything, and that Steve didn’t like him back.

He’s feeling mostly okay again by the time he turns on his car's rumbly engine. The sun is hanging low in the sky, blinding him to the cattle unmoving in the fields beyond the forests end. He’s still angry though, he realizes. Still vaguely unsure of how to deal with the constant thrum of quiet disappointment that makes the tendons in his wrist jump as his fingers pull tight around the steering wheel. His only saving grace is that it’s lesser now. Muted by the lingering effects of the too heavy high and buried beneath his overwrought rationalizations, Jonathan shifts the car back into gear and tries not to think about how Hopper might actually kill him if he was caught driving like this.

He drives back into town, the car still uncannily silent, and smokes the last of Steve’s forgotten cigarettes to the sound of his own steady breathing.

\---

His mother’s Ford Pinto isn’t in the driveway when he gets back, but instead, Will’s bike—along with a mess of others—is boxed in by a brown BMW.

Jonathan nearly curses out loud but finds himself biting his tongue and slamming his car door instead.

He approaches the house in silence, quietly trying to slip in unnoticed and unseen, and he’s almost successful. Hesitantly, he deposits his shoes by the door and hangs up his jacket, except when he walks into the kitchen, Dustin is there, peeking his nose into the refrigerator.

“Oh, _hey_ Jonathan,” Dustin beams, but it comes out all garbled, the boy's mouth full of potato chips and half chewed chocolate M&Ms. He can barely hear him: there’s a movie playing in the living room, the volume from the television set cranked almost uncomfortably loud, and between the cascading sounds of distant, Hollywood-esque explosions, he can hear the rest of the groups untamed laughter.

“That’s so fake!”

“_What_—no it’s not!”

Another loud boom, another chorus of:

“Holy _crap!”_

Then, before Jonathan has a chance to react, Dustin grabs the flat, half-drank 2 litre bottle of cola from the fridge and shouts: “_Hey_—Steve! Jonathan’s finally here!”

Jonathan falters, a pause in his step as his heart races in his chest, because _please_ god, please don’t hear him, please don’t—only _blip_, there he is.

There’s Steve.

He walks into the kitchen, his hand half-stuck into a bag of regular _Lays, _only—_oh_.

Steve hadn’t actually heard what Dustin had said.

Instead, what Jonathan hears is this:

“—hey you little shit, stop shouting! We can’t _hear _you. Thought you were getting us the po...p.”

Steve trails off awkwardly as he stops full on in his tracks, quickly pulling his fingers out of the bag of chips and rubbing his salty, slightly greasy hand on the front of his jeans. His mouth falls open, then closes again, eyes darting wildly between Jonathan and Dustin and back to Jonathan again before he cocks his head to the right. He simply stares at him in what Jonathan determines to be _the_ most pained looking expression of all time.

Dustin, as per usual, is oblivious.

“Yeah, Steve, I _was_,” he says, rolling his eyes, shaking the bottle of coke in Steve’s general direction. His words are a little clearer now, most of the mouthful of food having been swallowed down. “Then Jonathan came home. I thought that’s why you said you came over here. All, ‘_shut up guys: I’m super lame and don’t care about the Terminator; I’m only watching this with you until Jonathan shows up’_.”

“_Dustin_,” Steve hisses.

“What? It’s true—you’re pretty lame.”

“Dustin, _stop_,” Steve suddenly snaps in uncharacteristic harshness directed towards the younger boy. He shoves the bag of potato chips into his chest, and quickly sidesteps him, approaching Jonathan near the door. “Jonathan—look man, we need to talk.”

Jonathan just sighs, simply blinking.

Dustin is still babbling at him, still waving the half empty bottle of pop in his face, still completely oblivious to the strange unspoken standoff happening in complete parallel. He thinks of Steve, and Steve’s face at the cabin. Of that look of total and absolute panic after he kissed him. He thinks of Steve brushing by him and the weird, heavy silence of the car during the ride home. He thinks of their clipped conservation in the driveway and in the following days, his unusual avoidance of him. He thinks of the diner with Nancy, and of Steve catching sight of him through the window. He thinks of Steve now, eyes painfully pleading, asking of him what he wanted to do _days_ ago.

But there’s some things, Jonathan thinks quietly, that one can't come back from.

And he's not sure why, but his stomach then lurches in guilt with what he plans to do next.

“I’m tired,” he quietly lies, looking directly at Dustin. Not at Steve. Just Dustin. He swerves around Steve, dropping his car keys on the kitchen table. “Let Will know I’m going to bed, okay, buddy?”

He doesn’t see it on Steve’s face, because he doesn’t look. Instead, he sees it on Dustin’s: Steve’s mirrored frustration as the younger boy simply _stares _at him—at _both_ of them—eyes flitting back and forth between the forced divide of the pair made easy by the kitchen table.

“Is...everything _okay_, Jonathan?” Dustin then slowly asks, setting down the chips and pop.

Jonathan just nods, but he doesn’t say a word. He can’t. He can’t let Dustin hear how awful he feels right now and he doesn’t want to make things worse.

He’s given relief when Dustin _immediately_ spins on his feet, turning on Steve. It’s a dirty window of opportunity, and as he reaches the end of the hall, yanking open his bedroom door, he can hear it: Steve’s exhausted sounding swearing followed by Dustin’s sharp verbal attack.

\---

There’s an uneasiness to it all. A quiet anxiety in the way he fiddles with his stereo, trying to quickly find something—_anything—_to listen to so he doesn’t have to hear Dustin verbally berating Steve in the kitchen. He grabs the nearest tape sitting in the messy pile on his desk and shoves it into the tape deck.

It feels cowardly, somehow, he thinks. Listening to a fourteen year old tear his teeth into Steve for something he doesn’t fully understand, only knowing that Steve had done _something_ and Dustin wasn’t going to stand for it.

And the anxiety—

It was back in full force, whistling in his ears and clawing at his chest, and threatening—with each and every skittering thought in his brain—to completely pull him under, imploding amidst the unchecked anger.

Steve shouldn’t have come here, he thinks. Especially after all the phone calls. All of this was just one big mistake waiting to happen.

A jabbing fingers hits the play button and he cranks the volume, the cassette whirling to life, but masking the fight unfolding in the kitchen proves to be unnecessary: seconds later, there’s a knock on his door, followed by the Steve’s quiet:

“Jonathan—?”

Jonathan spins on his feet and feels his fingers clench tight, the rough cut of his nails pressing sharp, thin lines into the palm of his hand. Because of _course _he had followed him down the hall. Steve Harrington was as stubborn as Nancy Wheeler, and like Nancy, he never knew when to _give up. _

“What do you _want, _Steve?” The words slip out of his mouth before he can stop himself, practically a snarl.

“I think you should open the door,” came Steve’s even sounding, albeit hesitant response. “_So_...so we can...talk.”

Jonathan considers this. And for a moment, there is nothing but silence, precursory and harsh, before he spits out the words that have been sitting heavy on his tongue for quite some time:

“_Talk? _You mean like we did in the driveway—_right, _Steve?” The words don’t come out in the way that he wants them to: they’re too emotional, too close to that fine line of actually _feeling. _He bites down on his tongue and his insides twist in an ugly sort of way, more than well aware of how selfish Steve is being. Because Steve really never knew when to leave well enough alone. Steve always had to _push, and push, and push_—acting only when he wanted to and never _caring_ what others wanted—never giving others _space_ unless it suited him. Everything had to happen on _his_ timeline, _his _schedule, dictated by _his _selfish fucking agenda. But he doesn’t tell him this. Not yet. Instead, a harsh laugh falls from his mouth in tandem to the pounding of his own heart, and finally, dully, he lets out: “I’m done talking, Harrington: so you can fuck _right_ off.”

And Jonathan can feel it. His insides burning. He can feel the desperate sort of tension in his gut, but not just his gut—it was in the very house, etched into the very grain of the wooden door that separated them and clinging to the fibers of the rough carpet beneath his feet. There’s a harsh suck of air followed by a light _clack_, like the sound of a falling hand hitting softly upon the door. Jonathan tries to focus on something else—his breathing—because it’s hard, it’s really, really _hard t_o do all of this. He feels terrible. He’s filled with the unpleasant sort of emotions that he doesn’t like to deal with, the ugliness raking at his insides. They’re emotions that he doesn’t recognize, doesn’t want to, and reflexively, he squeezes his eyes shut.

Then, as the silence lingers, there’s a low, quiet sounding whistle.

“This is stupid, Jonathan. Please open the door.”

Jonathan pauses, steadying his breathing, but he doesn’t respond.

"Jonathan?"

Again, more silence.

“Alright, man—you asked for this.”

Then, for a moment, there is nothing. Just more silence. More nothingness. Just more of Jonathan carefully eying the door, _listening_ for movement.

What Steve does next almost kills him.

“Why did you_ kiss_ me at the cabin, Jonathan? I mean, I know I’m charming and handsome, and like, _the _greatest guy in Hawkins, but I mean, c’mon man—”

His voice is so loud and so obnoxiously over enunciated that Jonathan practically jumps back in shock, because, Jesus _Christ—_what the hell was Steve _doing? _Then, the ugliness inside of him is replaced by something else: a furious albeit quickly rising panic. Unthinkingly, he flings open the door.

What he sees is Steve is simply standing there, arms crossed with thick lines knitted across the length of his forehead. Then, his face falls in relief.

“Thanks,” is all he says, quickly pushing his way into the room, and he shuts the door behind him.

Jonathan's brain momentarily malfunctions. It can barely register what is happening, but the first thing he recognizes is this: Steve—Steve Harrington—had just _yelled_ at the top of his lungs that he had _kissed_ him at the cabin.

“Holy _shit:_ you’re an_ asshole!_” he practically shouts. It’s all he could really manage. All he could think of it. This...this wasn’t happening. Steve hadn’t really just shouted _that_ throughout the entirety of the whole goddamn house! Not with his brother there. Not with Dustin. Not with the gang of kids watching a movie in the living room.

The second thing he recognizes is that the cassette he had hastily shoved into the stereo was something Steve had left with him weeks ago: it was a mixed tape and _god, _the song that was playing right now was something by fucking _Journey. _

“You were being difficult,” Steve snaps back. Then, quieter: “We just need to talk, okay? And doing that through your bedroom door seemed _stupid._”

Jonathan pauses. Steve had made his way deep into his room now and had propped himself up against his bookcase near his desk, but he looked...less than. Less than Steve. Less than confident. Less than self-assured. It was one of those weird, uncommon things that Steve rarely let show and Jonathan isn’t sure what to make of it.

“Look man, I didn’t come here to fight with you,” Steve suddenly blurts. He fidgets on the spot, his foot tapping lightly against the floor. “I really did just want to talk.”

Jonathan looks at Steve, I mean really _looks_ at him. He thinks of all the things he could have said in the interim between that moment in the cabin and this particular moment occuring now and how there had been so many opportunities—so many wasted days—for him to come and find him. Before the sadness faded. Before the anger set in. Sighing, he finds himself shaking his head.

“I don’t think there’s anything to say,” he tells him neutrally, trying with all the willpower within him that he had accumulated over the years to keep his voice calm. It wavers only slightly, just for a second, and for this he is thankful.

Steve blinks and blinks again before running his shaky hand through his hair. The tapping of his foot only begins to quicken.

“Jesus, man!” he suddenly snaps. “Why are you making this so _difficult?_”

Jonathan flinches, but immediately finds himself going on the attack.

“You’re the one who—,” He stops himself, letting out a heavy, aggravated sigh. He wasn’t going to do this. He wasn’t going to let Steve get to him. “I’m _not_—,” he tries again, quieter this time, but Steve cuts him off.

“—you are! You’re making this so, _so_ difficult!” Steve practically accuses, and he takes a sudden unprecedented step towards him that finds Jonathan quickly stepping back.

“Then talk!” he almost shouts, but he doesn’t. He feels unnerved and exhausted, and the way Steve’s nervous energy practically radiated off him in large, overwhelming waves was really, _really _getting to him.

“I just—_okay,_” Steve starts. He paces on the spot, his hand quickly pulling back into it’s spot wedged between the side of his chest and the crook of his elbow to hide the fidgeting before turning and stopping again. He inhales deeply and then Jonathan sees it, just for a second: the absolute shakiness of his whole entire body. “I’m sorry I freaked out,” Steve then spits out in a rush. “At the cabin,” he then clarifies awkwardly, almost as an afterthought. “And I'm sorry I’ve been a dick to you ever since we got back. I just...you just…”

Without his pacing, or the outlet of a tapping his foot, Steve was clearly and visibly shaking. He wasn't even trying to hide his hand anymore. It was just_ there, _tapping restlessly against his side. Even worse was his face: he looked absolutely and undeniably _scared_, with his teeth chewing tersely on the curve of his lower lip.

Shit.

“Okay, okay just...stop,” Jonathan tries, exhaling heavily, because he’s not sure why, but he suddenly feels _bad._ Really bad. And watching Steve practically fall apart in front of him wasn’t what he had been expecting when he had forced his way into his room. “It’s—,”—_not fine_, he thinks, so he doesn’t say it— “I shouldn’t have kissed you,” he allows in a quiet concession hoping this will placate him, only Steve’s eyes go wide as he abruptly shakes his head.

“_No_—no, man, it’s not that—I mean, that’s fine, it’s just—,”

He was still shaking. His foot was tapping again too, his entire leg jostling up and down, but even with this, his trembling was just getting worse—he was practically quivering—and Jonathan blinks.

“It’s fine,” he tries to offer. “I get it—,”

“—you don’t!” It's a quiet pant, Steve’s expression essentially agonized at this point, the lines of his face all twisted and wrong, pulled brutally in every direction. And then slowly, like how someone might speak to a cornered, frightened animal, Steve tries again:

“Jonathan, you...don’t get _it._” He takes in a deep breath, then another, and Jonathan’s face slips in confusion: Steve’s cheeks were red and there was a faint flush extending down the side of his neck as well. “I...okay. So maybe I’m coming at this all wrong and maybe this is just me being crazy, because this is _crazy_, right?”

He pauses, running his hand through his hair for what Jonathan thinks must be the hundredth time and then starts again.

“I’m probably coming at this from the far left field too,” Steve adds, “And maybe I’ve been reading you wrong for the past fews weeks, and this is the weirdest, hardest conversation I’ve ever had to have with someone in my life, and my dad gave me the sextalk when I was like, _eight—,”_

There’s a second pause in Steve’s babbling and Jonathan nearly flinches.

“Christ, this is stupid!” Steve suddenly declares, and then, before Jonathan can even react, he blurts out:

_“IthinkIlikeyoutoo?”_

The confession comes out in a rushed mess of too many syllables and not enough vowels, but despite it’s messiness, Jonathan hears it loud and clear. Steve squeezes his eyes shut in a long, shuddering exhale and there’s a brief second where Jonathan feels heartbeat stutter.

Then, a gaping, lingering silence erupts, one that threatens to consume both of them as it settles evenly over the room.

Steve…

He…

Jonathan's teeth click sharply into place.

“You..._what?_”

He doesn’t mean for it to come out as punctured as it does and Steve sucks in another breath of air, his chest heaving. He almost feels _bad_ again because Steve looked like he was in absolute gut agonizing _pain, _his shoulders sinking into his shirt, but Jonathan quickly, if not carefully shakes his head. This was...he didn’t…

He didn’t understand.

“You...you _shoved _me out of the way at the cabin,” he suddenly snaps at him, more than a bit confused. “You acted like what I had done was _terrible—,”_

“—Jonathan,” Steve tries weakly, taking an unsteady step towards him.

“—and then you ignored me for over an entire week!—” he reminds him, voice teeming with incredulousness.

“—Jonathan!”

“—And the _avoidance_? That shit you pulled at the diner? How is that _liking _someone when—,”

He doesn’t have a chance to finish what he is saying because Steve is suddenly _right there_, right there in front of him, and _oh_—

Steve is kissing him.

Jonathan feels his entire body stiffen under the weight of Steve's body, his lips practically crashing down on top of him. And he can feel it—the absolute franticness in which Steve pulls at him—the way his hands hold firm albeit still shaky against the collar of his shirt, or how his knee feels heavy in the way it seeks refuge between his thighs. Then, unexpectedly, there is the touch of tongue with quiet gasps and a shuddered exhale.

Just as quickly as it had happened, Steve pulls back, white knuckled fingers letting go of him.

Jonathan practically stumbles over himself, his heartbeat pounding in his head and oh—_oh. _Steve had actually kissed him. He had actually just...

"You...I….that was—," is all Jonathan can manage, stuttering.

"I...yes..._that,_" Steve exhales, near breathless and voice heavy. Then: "You wouldn't shut up and I..._god, _Jonathan, I just really, really like you!"

"But you—,"

"—I was _scared_, man! I've never had a crush this bad before, let alone on a _guy_."

Steve was shaking again, his fingers trapped by an unmistakable tremor that didn't seem to cease even as he tried curling them into a tightly balled fist.

"I just…" he tries to say, but his voice breaks and Jonathan blinks—the spell of all his earlier anger broken—and he takes a step forward, quickly grabbing the other's hand. Steve’s fingers feel cold and shaky but they curl into his own, melting against his touch and Jonathan squeezes them, trying to push out any and all of his worry with the brush of a careful thumb milling circles over the back of his palm.

"Steve,” he breathes. “I was scared too." It’s a quiet admittance, his voice tempered by a fragile sort of uneasiness, as if he didn't quite know what to say or how to say it. He didn’t know how to explain any of it—any of the worry, or the promises or even the lies he had told himself—probably in the same way that Steve was struggling to explain himself now, and so Jonathan just nods. "So it’s fine—I get it."

"It's not fine," Steve quickly rebuts with an equal quietness, but his fingers dig deeper into Jonathan's palm, clinging to him like a lifeline. "Man, _I_...I was such a dick and I felt like _such _an asshole. I just. I freaked out. I didn't know what I was doing and I still don't," he admits, voice breaking. "I...I've never done this before."

What Steve is telling him isn’t the least bit funny—it’s sad, almost—a testament to the way he was brought up and vaguely reminiscent of the old Steve he knew. The one back in high school who would posture and sneer his way through every social interaction, not really knowing what he was doing, not really understanding, only to show up at the Byers doorstep with a half-thought out apology, the only _real_ thing he knew being was that he had fucked up. All the same, it doesn’t stop him from chuckling, Jonathan exhaling a small:

"Same.”

The hint of laughter seems to be enough for Steve—enough to somehow fix things between them and make things right—and he exhales again, letting out a long, heavy breath, his anxiety deflating with it. The last of his trembling is blown out with it and finally, Steve is Steve again.

"So this is…" He pauses for a second, screwing up his face before shaking his head. "You like me," he then states, not as a question, but as a matter of fact. Jonathan answers the unspoken question anyways.

"Yes."

"And I like you," he says, lips slowly curling into a half formed grin.

"Yes."

"And we both agree that we don't know what we're doing," Steve adds wryly as his final observation.

"I mean," Jonathan hums, teeth pulling at his lower lip. "The kissing seemed like a good start."

"Oh _god,_ yes—," His suggestion is responded to almost_ immediately_, and Steve’s free hand is suddenly clenched in the wrinkly fabric of his shirt, pulling him close again.

Steve was—

He was—

He was actually going to kiss him. Again.

It’s comes slower this time. Despite Steve's lunge, there’s less franticness in the actions of his movement, less rush. Instead, Jonathan sees it all. Every freckle on Steve’s approaching cheeks, every line on his forehead, every eyelash surrounding his brown, brown eyes. And he’s smiling.

Just like before. Just like at the beginning of summer during that first walk home together.

A real smile.

He feels the press of Steve’s lips against his own, slightly damp and wet, as if Steve had _just_ licked his lips before giving in and the slow, but experimental way he moves against him. Trying to figure out what works, trying to see what makes him respond. Then, his fingers dig deep into the fabric of his shirt, fingers pressing hard against the planes of his stomach. Jonathan let’s out a near silent but noticeable moan.

The effect is instantaneous and suddenly Steve was tugging, pressing, _shoving _up against him—up against the wall behind them—and there’s a _thud_—something falling off the bookcase—and Steve is just right _there. _Warm mouth practically begging him to moan again, only, Jonathan gasps.

“_Holy shit—_Steve, I—_,”_

Steve pulls back for a second, panting heavily, and Jonathan just watches him, the pounding of his heart practically threatening to explode from his chest.

“C’mon, Jon,” Steve practically whines. “I know we haven’t spoken more than two sentences to each other in a week in a half, but now is when you’ve decided we should talk?”

“I mean—,”

He grunts and Steve cuts him off again through the press of his lips, shoving him hard against the wall again. Steve’s hands were wandering too—not just in the fabric of his shirt, but beneath it, and Jonathan feels himself moan. To his own ears it doesn’t even sound like himself—it’s deep and breathy and _oh god, _was that Steve’s tongue?

Then, they were both moving backwards, stumbling over piles of unwashed laundry. Steve’s lips trace over his, pulling back for a second before his tongue dips back inside again. His hand too—

It had settled on his lower back, bringing him closer, tighter, flush against him, and Jonathan can feel the hard press of Steve’s erection through the rough fabric of his jeans settled against his thigh.

This was...this was happening. This was actually happening.

“You acted,” Steve grunts, and he oh—he was pulling off his shirt, tossing it carelessly over onto the bed. “Like you hated me.”

“I didn’t,” Jonathan denies breathlessly, chasing after his mouth. Steve however, wasn’t done with the shedding clothing yet and was pulling on Jonathan’s shirt, lifting the fabric above the raise of his arms, dropping it on the floor next to them.

He feels it before he hears it: a gasp and Steve’s quiet moan as his hips roll against him, sending Jonathan down crashing onto the bed.

“I hated not talking to you,” Steve murmurs, presses into his lips, hands moving lower, and lower and settling on the jut of his hip, fingers digging into the bone.

“I—” Steve cut him off through another kiss, another pull of hair, and Jonathan’s brain practically melts. “Same,” he is all he can manage and ends up hissing when Steve’s hand finds his own erection through the press of his palm. He doesn’t, however, move.

“_Steve,_” Jonathan practically begs, because Christ, do something—anything! Anything was better than having his hand there, but not there, palming him but his fingers unmoving.

“_Shit,_” Steve suddenly gasps. “I’m just...okay, gimme’ a minute,” he tries, but he sounds pained, and Jonathan watches curiously as Steve squeezes his eyes shut, a look of intense concentration pulling at the corner of his lips. Jonathan just blinks, frozen in place, and then before he realizes what he’s doing, his hand reaches for his cheek. Steve’s eyes flutter open, just softly, very slowly, a quiet shudder pressing through his teeth, when they both hear it:

It was a loud, frantic pounding on the bedroom door.

“Jonathan? _Steve? _We heard noises!_” _

It was Dustin.

Jonathan nearly chokes.

Steve does, however, and Jonathan just blinks again, his chest practically heaving from his undue breathlessness. Then, he watches as above him Steve swearing under his breath, squeezing his eyes shut again. He groans, the frantically disappointed words of: “No, no, _no_,” slipping quietly out of his mouth as he leans into one final press against his lips.

Then, he sits up, head snapping towards the door.

“Hey, Harrington! I know you’re in there—open up!”

Then, the door knob rattles.

There’s a lurch in Jonathan’s chest and he watches it as Steve experiences it too: a sudden hiss of air escaping the other’s mouth as he tries to quell his frantic breathing. His face as well is a mask of utter disappointment and if Jonathan had to describe it he wouldn’t even know where to start. Steve just looked...upset. Like he wanted to bang his hand against a wall, or maybe Dustin’s.

“We’re a little—uh...busy right now, Henderson,” Steve lets out, his breathing heavy and limbs flailing as he slips off the bed. Jonathan watches as it happens—Steve’s frantic search for his shirt amongst the piles of laundry scattered across the carpet, only he trips over the book that had fallen from the bookcase earlier and falls flat on his ass.

“_Ow!—fuck_.”

“_Steve?_” Dustin calls again. “Are you okay?! Are you fighting again?”

The doorknob rattles again and Steve’s head twists sharply towards Jonathan.

“_Clothes_,” he hisses and Jonathan just nods—oh, shit, _right_—and he sits up, grabbing for the nearest vaguely shirt-shaped item he can find. “I’m fine, Dustin, just fine—” Steve then shouts back towards the hallway. “Just gimme a sec here, I—,”

The door swings open, and from his spot on the bed, Jonathan witnesses the true athletic prowess of Steve Harrington in action: a graceless albeit quick sort of scramble from the floor to the door in less than three seconds flat.

Jonathan’s heart stutters in his chest again and he feels his lungs seize up, choked by the curious gaze of Dustin Henderson who was peering into the room.

This was…

It was—

“_Uh,_ Steve,” the younger boy begins. “Why are you all sweaty? And topless...and why is Jonathan wearing _your _shirt?”

This was bad.

Steve groans, loud and emphatic, and Jonathan looks down.

The shirt he was wearing was the same stupid golden yellow t-shirt he had worn before at the diner that morning post-graduation, the one with the _Indiana Pacers _logo on it.

And distantly, just beyond the heavy hammering of his own heart, he can hear it: the mixtape had ended, the distinctive sound of the track wheel clicking endlessly over the sound of the stereos static.

No music. No sound to muffle the noise.

Fuck.


	14. Chapter 14

Jonathan is thirty-seconds deep into a deafening silence and thirty seconds away from blurting out the stupidest lie of his whole entire life when he realizes he had never really thought about it. About openly kissing another boy in front of another person, that is, let alone that person being a kid who he’s known since his younger brother entered the first grade.

There's a sudden burst of panic that is quickly consumed as his mind drifts to that feel good, this feels _right _kiss he had experienced with Steve mere minutes ago and Jonathan blinks.

Then, there is nothing. The panic is gone, his mind oddly resigned to the inevitable fact that Dustin knew what they had been doing. It's then that he realizes a stark truth in a very underwhelming sort of way: he doesn't really care. He'll be gone soon, a voice reminds him—out of this shithole town, out of Hawkins—but even so, he’s not sure if he wants to deal with the intensely cloying ramifications of having his bedroom activities paraded around by a loose-lipped fourteen year old. At least not until he’s had some sort of conversation with the other person whose mouth had just been on his, sticky and wet, and oh, _right_, had been mere seconds away from pulling off his pants.

It's only when he looks to Steve, he realizes a second stark truth: Steve would _not_ be gone soon. Steve would be stuck in Hawkins.

“_Steve?_” Dustin finally repeats cautiously, and inside of him, Jonathan's apathy melts into a cold dread. His stomach twists and it feels like his lungs are about to jump straight out of his throat and onto the bed.

He tries to think. Of something to say. To not think of Steve's jarringly panicked face, and it's then that he realizes how nothing is quiet. Instead, everything is weird and amplified and not at all like the way he knew his home to be. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to listen, trying for the hush of his room normally afforded by the loudness of his music, only it isn’t there. What he’s met with rather is a different kind of loudness—one that was being created by the overwhelming silence clawing sharply at the three of them.

What he hears instead is this: there is heavy breathing and the tape deck still clicking audibly in a steady and repetitive melody alongside the near painful pounding of his own heart. Outside and down the hall, he could hear voices—Max and Lucas arguing, Will chattering quietly with Mike—the rapid fire explosions of the movies’ soundtrack dimmed to a low roar as if the gang of children had suddenly realized that something happening in the house wasn’t quite right, wasn’t quite normal. And if he listened hard enough, he could even hear beyond that. The slow songs of late summer barn sparrows chattering in the evening sun; a motorbike’s cylinder kicking off and sputtering up the road and the low hum of sunset’s crickets. All crystal clear, all adding to the overwhelming din.

Jonathan opens his eyes and finds himself looking at Steve again. His stomach sinks because he's not sure he's seen the other ever look so scared.

Then, abruptly, the stereo switches off, the winding wheels of the tape stopping mid rotation, and Jonathan breathes.

Just breathes.

What occurs next happens all very quickly: with all the grace of a bull elephant, Steve jumps between Dustin and the door, but the younger boy tactlessly pushes past him and stares directly at Jonathan laying on the bed.

“Well, _uh_...we...were…” Steve says, turning on his heels, only there’s a stutter to his words and a noticeable slowness in the way he speaks. Like he couldn’t fully think of what to say, like he too was panicking just as badly as Jonathan was but for a different reason—his brain both doubly mortified and equally as unthinking. Quietly, he also wonders if Steve was also experiencing the same problems breathing that he was. Given the way that he suddenly sucked in another large, large breath of air, the answer was probably _yes._

Patiently, Dustin waited and Jonathan isn't stupid enough to think that the younger boys' concerns weren't justified. The standoff in the kitchen between them had been the preclusive act to what Dustin had probably assumed to be another dogfight between their clashing egos. However, his timing was terribly inconvenient—and _god, the kid probably thought we were beating the shit out of each other again._ Until he saw _this. _

They hadn’t exactly been the epitome of quiet.

But Jonathan wasn’t even’t looking at Dustin, instead his eyes were still focused on Steve. Steve who was fumbling _badly_ in light of what it looked like they had been doing (which they had), whose mouth was hanging agape and eyes painfully wide. Jonathan just blinks again, slowly, and presses his lips thin. His thirty seconds are up.

Then, before he knew what he was even saying, the word had popped out of his mouth:

“Aerobics.”

He realizes how terribly stupid it sounded the moment it was spoken. Aerobics. What the _fuck _was he thinking?

The effect of his poorly thought out explanation is instantaneous:

“_Aerobics_?” both Steve _and _Dustin repeat simultaneously in incredulous tandem.

Steve’s gaze whipped towards Jonathan, the other shooting him a hard and pointed stare. It was a look that said: _you are the dumbest person I’ve had the misfortune of having a painfully difficult crush on, ever—_and Jonathan forces himself up onto his elbows, feeling the faint burn of humiliation wash across his face.

Steve then lets out a large, albeit controlled exhale and Jonathan sees it: the plastering of a terse, teeth clenching smile as Steve Harrington attempts to regain any semblance of control over the quickly spiraling conversation.

“What Jonathan _meant_ to say was that we were fighting,” he says. And it’s almost believable. The way Steve rocks on the balls of his feet with the sheepish, almost apologetic fall of his shoulders seems to fall in line with the story of an older apologetic adult figure, as if he hadn’t _meant _to disappoint Dustin in such an unbelievably shitty way.

There’s another moment of silence. Another painful stretching of time as Jonathan watches the lines of Dustin’s face screw up tight, expression morphing from muddled confusion into a slow slip of introspection. Digesting this new facet of information and trying to make sense of it all. Only Dustin, like Jonathan, can see that the pieces don’t fit. The pieces are all wrong, like he’s working with two separate puzzles, and slowly his lips screw up into a deeply perturbed frown.

“_O_kay,” he then says, gaze shifting abruptly back to Steve. He looks Steve up and down, down and up, and then his eyes sharply flit back to Jonathan. “So then why is _he_ wearing _your_ shirt then?” he asks, fingers waving at him accusingly.

“He stole my shirt,” Steve says automatically. There’s an unmistakable tone of confidence in his voice—again, it’s _there_: the believable cool of what was undoubtedly a lie—but the calm and undeterred assuredness of Steve’s voice was practically enough to even have Jonathan believe what Steve was saying. His ability to spin the conversation to his own liking—his ability to simply and naturally _lie_—was actually impressive.

It shouldn't surprise him, he realizes however. Steve was, and had been for quite some time, faking it. Every weirdly over-enthusiastic smile that Jonathan had found himself frowning at earlier in the summer had been a testament to that. And when that failed—when Steve’s guileless sociability wasn’t enough—he would bully his way out of any situation with all the brute viciousness of a cornered dog. Jonathan too had been deceived by it: the only difference now was that he _knew_ why Steve was so good at it. An unsatisfactory home life filled with meaningless parental relationships that at times crossed over the line from neglect to closeted abuse had afforded Steve an entire adolescence to work at perfecting this particular craft. But between Steve and his parents, and Steve and Jonathan, the deviation in their relationships was vast: Jonathan, unlike Steve’s parents, was at least close enough to him to see the cracks.

Steve’s fingers curl quickly into the curve of his palm and _ah_—there it was. The crack.

“Anyways,” Steve continues, as if they were having a conversation about the weather or the latest scores from yesterday’s baseball game. “Thanks, Henderson. For checking on us—really knocked some sense into me and stopped us from making a huge mistake.”

Dustin just blinks and then, slowly, takes a singular step back towards the door.

“You’re acting weird Steve,” is what he says firmly, still frowning. “Really weird. Jonathan: give Steve his shirt back. Because all of this is _weird_.”

Jonathan just blinks again, a mumbled, “_Uh_...sure, Dustin,” slipping out of his mouth. He knows he should say something else—anything, really—but instead finds himself really, _really_ thankful that at least Steve seemed to have a grasp on the situation because his own ability to form coherent, _believable _sentences was sorely lacking.

“_Right_,” Dustin says. His frown deepens, but he turns around, stepping out into the hall. There’s a quiet sigh of relief from Steve as he fingers grip the edge of the door, preparing to swing it shut and Jonathan sits up completely, swinging his legs over onto the edge of the bed, toes touching into the threadbare fibers of the old carpet. They were safe.

Then, Dustin pauses, turning back on his heels, gaze furtively peering back into the bedroom.

“So does like...Will know about you guys ‘aerobic-fighting’,” he asks, raising a singular, skeptical brow. “Like, I’m cool with it, I guess, but how long has this been going on for? And what about your mom, Jonathan? Does she know?”

_Oh. _

Jonathan feels his cheeks colour instantly, because _oh my god—_and Steve? Steve looked like he was on the verge of collapsing. His smile had shifted, the curve of his lips no longer pleasantly warm but rather sharp edged like the same way his nostrils were flaring with the quick inhale of his breath.

“Good_bye_, Dustin!” Steve grits through the whites of his teeth, and door slams shut, effectively blocking out the curious albeit perturbed looking face of one Dustin Henderson. Then, there’s a _click_, the lock flipping shut and Steve falls against the door frame, visibly exhausted.

Jonathan just groans again, squeezing his eyes shut, because, _well_—

That could have gone better. A lot better. All of it, really.

He’s scared too. Scared to open his eyes and look at Steve, because Dustin knew. He knew and he’s not sure how Steve was going to react, and the panic is back. It’s back and his fingers clamp down tight on the edge of the mattress, teeth biting at the soft flesh of his lower lip and he’s not sure he could do it. Lose Steve again. Not after finally having him back.

“I—,” he tries slowly, opening his eyes. He looks over to Steve and finds the other is simply staring at him, his expression unreadable. There’s a tap to his foot and a fidget in the way his fingers curl restlessly into his palm, but his face is just blank. Nothing. No smiles, no anger, no shock—just nothing. “Shit, Steve, I’m sorry—,”

“—_aerobics_?” Steve suddenly blurts out, cutting him off. “Out of all the things you could have said we were doing, the first thing that popped into your mind was _aerobics?_”

For all of five seconds, the two boys just stare at one another, Steve’s expression still inscrutable and blank, Jonathan’s mirroring complete and total embarrassment. It was such a bad lie. It was such a _stupid _thing to say. It was…

Sort of funny.

And maybe it was because Steve’s lip was twitching slightly too, or maybe it was because Jonathan couldn’t get over how _ridiculous_ this whole evening had been, but he starts to laugh. It sets off a cadence—Steve bursts with him, closing the gap between them in two quick strides and he shoves him back down onto the bed, falling down onto the space next to him.

“Sorry,” Jonathan repeats again, gasping for air. “Shit—I panicked.”

Steve’s fingers dig into his ribs, a gasped “ow” escaping from his lips, and the other boy turns to him on his side, trying (and failing) to stifle his own laughter.

“_Clearly_,” he grins. “Jesus, man: have you always been this bad of a liar?”

Jonathan considers lying again, but thinks better of it, offering him a quiet, half laughed:

“No..._yes. _I just...I wasn’t expecting him to come in here like that.”

Steve greets him with another breathy chuckle and when Jonathan cranes his neck to get a glimpse of him, he finds that he is smiling. Just smiling. And really, it was something absolutely beautiful to look at. Jonathan tries to think of the last time he ever saw him like this, even though he knows there’s been a thousand little moments over the past few months this summer. A thousand little stolen smiles that have left him breathless and wind dizzy and for the better part of the past few weeks in chest-aching pain. What he really wants to do is just memorize it all. Steve. Everything about him. Every line to his smile. Every strand of messy hair. Every breathy sigh—birthed moments of visible happiness. There's a voice in the back of his head too that is telling him he should say something—they needed to talk, really talk—but he’s being selfish again, the feeling of Steve’s heavy fingers tracing idle patterns up and down the length of his arm, and even the sound of the other’s breathing (so much louder and clearer than the evening crickets or the movie down the hall) forcing him to ignore his own practicality.

He should ask him, he thinks. About what they’re doing. About Dustin. If him seeing them together really mattered. About what’s going to happen when he goes away to school. That last question is really, _really_ important, he thinks.

“I’m going to kiss you again,” Steve suddenly announces, cockiness pressing at his voice and Jonathan’s questions die unborn, lost to his own excitement. He just nods, a hand on his neck guiding him towards the middle of the mattress, dry lips and nerves and all the want and desire of a summer's worth of longing dancing across his skin.

The kiss as they lay on his bed, the box spring crying quietly beneath their weight, the room growing dark and quiet as the last of the mid-August sun is swallowed by the trees.

Jonathan tries to listen again, but there’s no sound, just the hitch of Steve’s breath and the muffled sighs of two boys as fingers slowly trace bones beneath skin. Jonathan reaches out to rest his fingers against Steve’s and for the first time ever, the other pulls him in, no hesitation.

\---

Jonathan is only half awake when he feels the press of Steve’s nose against the curve of his neck followed by the warm exhale of the other’s breath tracing his skin. He is all warmth—all soft nudges and gentle grasps, begging for the simple contact of his skin—and Jonathan is quickly discovering that this is how Steve likes to express himself the best: through touch.

“Hey, Jonathan?” the other murmurs, voice hoarse and thick with sleep.

Jonathan isn’t sure what time it is, only that it's early, the grey light of dawn barely pushing through the thin material of his old bedroom curtains. They had fallen asleep last night sometime after the kids movie had ended, the house enveloped in a sudden silence in the absence of muffled chatter and muted explosions with Steve tucked against his side and decidedly sleepy after what had seemed like _the_ longest make-out session in the history of the world. At some point his mother had come home too, but Steve, already half-asleep, didn’t seem to hear the quiet clattering in the kitchen, nor the rattling of the pipes in the bathroom across the hallway adjacent. Instead, he had sighed breathily, pressed in closer, and simply hummed. His mother however, is a different story, and Jonathan is smart enough to know that a conversation about the extra pair of shoes by the front door is bound to happen—the moment Steve's car parked in the driveway disappears, she will will be asking him to sit with her at the table, another coffee in hand.

Reality however, wasn’t calling him for another few hours. Instead what he has is the dreamlike state of waking up next to Steve in bed, and for the first ever, feeling _good_ about it. Yawning, Jonathan shifts left, arm falling off the edge of the mattress and Steve responds by pulling him back towards him, needy fingers trapping him in a close embrace. There’s a light sigh—the sound of contentment as Steve’s warm breath falls upon his skin again—followed by a sharp albeit not unkind chuckle.

“Were you...smoking?” Steve continues, voice no more than whisper. “I meant to ask you last night, but…”

Jonathan blinks, wriggling away from the embrace and shifts to face him, a shy half smile pulling at his lips.

“_Were _you?” Steve presses, smirking, “You just, _uh_...kinda smell like my Marlboro’s. It’s not bad, I just...wasn’t expecting that,” and Jonathan snorts, pressing his cheek deep into the pillow.

“You left a pack of cigarettes in my car,” is all he offers in return, his shy smile turning smug.

“Smokings’ bad, Johnny-boy,” Steve grins, but there's no real sharpness to his words, no sting, and Jonathan snorts, rolling his eyes.

Then: “There was a joint I smoked too,” he tells Steve as a matter of fact, “I was pretty pissed off at you,” and Steve’s fingers dig into his sides in retaliation, eliciting from him a squirm and half-whispered: “_Steve—_stop_"._

Seconds later, Steve relents and falls back into the mattress, but a singular hand remains, refusing to break contact with his skin. His fingers feel surprisingly cool compared to the rest of him, mindlessly sliding up and down the planes of his abdomen and occasionally coming to rest on the fan of his ribcage. It feels nice in a way that is almost too over stimulating—a small reminder as to where they had stopped the night before—and Jonathan hums, pressing a hand over Steve's, trying to think of all the things he needs to say but simply hasn't.

“Are you free later today?” Steve suddenly asks, voice surprisingly quiet. His hand too had stopped moving completely, the fingers laying flat against his stomach and Jonathan tilts his head right, trying to understand. “For a date,” Steve clarifies quickly, and even in the gray light of morning, he thinks he can see it: a faint hint of pink flushing across Steve’s cheeks.

_Oh. _

“I..._yeah_,” Jonathan exhales almost too quickly, but the voice is the back of his mind is still screaming at him, questions unbound and tangling up his tongue. He knows he shouldn’t ask, he _knows_ (he doesn’t want to ruin this), but it comes out anyways, a mess of furrowed brows and cautious intonations: “But are you...okay with—,” he trails off and watches as Steve patiently, if not uneasily waits for him to finish and Jonathan exhales, forcing himself to continue. “Last night,” he tries again. “With Dustin. There was a moment where I thought you were going to…" Another pause, another swallowed fear. "We live in Hawkins,” he finishes quickly, biting down on his tongue hard and Steve seems to get it, eyes widening in sudden understanding.

"Oh," is all he says at first. Just oh. Like he hadn't really thought about it—or if he had, his morning, sleep addled brain had quite remembered it—and Jonathan let's out a quiet exhale.

“My...dad” Steve then adds with a small huff, and Jonathan thinks he sounds wet again. Defeated. "He won't…" and Jonathan squeezes Steve's fingers hard against his own, Steve's voice lost to the quiet realization that his father would in all likelihood continue to be an unmitigated bastard.

Jonathan almost feels bad—he knows he shouldn’t have asked that. He knows he shouldn’t have planted such an unwanted thought in the back of Steve’s mind, that callous reminder that when they leave his bedroom, it won’t be the same. That beyond this insular world of messy bed sheets and faded carpets, their actions hidden by chipped paint and old drywall sheets, that Hawkins, Indiana—and by proxy, his parents—won’t be so accepting of it. Of them.

Steve is silent for a moment, gaze drifting to the ceiling and Jonathan can feel his fingers curl under his own again, an invisible tremor hidden beneath the cup of Jonathan’s hand. He squeezes back, an apology for ruining their morning.

“It’s okay if we don’t,” Jonathan quietly adds, the unspoken _‘go on dates’_ left to linger in the silence.

Steve stiffens at this, a quick: “_No—_,” slipping out of his mouth and Jonathan eyes him curiously, the other boy curling on his side to face him again.

“I want to,” Steve tells him plainly, and there’s a small smile tracing his lips that Jonathan thinks looks sad. “But…” He trails off again, and then quietly: “Aren’t you…” There’s a heavy exhale and Steve’s eyes flutter shut, “—_scared_?”

Jonathan thinks about yesterday. About what he realized and how he was leaving. He thinks he should tell Steve this. How it’s not going to matter anyways. He thinks he should push himself to continue to have this hard conversation and say the most important thing that’s been on his mind since Steve kissed him last night in his bedroom. Two weeks. Maybe three. That’s all they have. He doesn’t and instead, offers him nothing more than an equally quiet:

“_Yeah_...a little.”

Steve, for reasons unknown, seems to relax at Jonathan’s admission and lets out a tired sounding hum, pressing a bare shoulder thick against his side.

“We can go to the diner,” he then says after a moment's time. “And then take a drive to the quarry.”

“So just like us hanging out regularly,” Jonathan smirks without missing a beat.

“Okay, _yes,” _Steve admits, rolling his eyes. “But now we get to kiss and shit after,” he adds, grinning widely.

Jonathan feels himself laugh, pulling his hand from Steve’s grasp and swats at him, the hit landing on Steve’s stomach. Despite the softness of swing, Steve lets out an overly exaggerated _oomph. _He thinks he might retaliate again, but Steve pushes himself up on the crook of his elbows instead and presses a soft, almost hesitant kiss against the corner of Jonathan’s mouth.

When he pulls back, Steve is simply smiling at him.

“I love being able to do that now,” is all he says in explanation. Beyond the end of the bed, the morning sun had finally risen past the tree line, the light in the room shifting and spilling golden hues across the floor. The sun consumes Steve’s skin, and as he leans in to kiss him once more, a toothless smile devours the vast brightness of his indescribably beaming face.

The questions in his mind melt and Jonathan gives in.

\---

The lights of the city are barely visible from where they sit, a soft glow eking it’s way into the faded night time blue of the sky that creeps beyond the canopy of tall pines surrounding the white carved cliffs and sandy red soil of the quarry. Next to him, Steve cracks a beer and hands it to Jonathan before grabbing another one from the six-pack next to him and popping the tab just as quick.

“Sorry that they’re warm,” he says, and Jonathan just nods, taking a sip anyways.

They had gone to the diner earlier for dinner, Jonathan deftly avoiding his mother's expected kitchen interrogations with an excuse about having been called into work. Steve, habitual in his patterns, had barely eaten and made errant comments about the fellow guests while Jonathan had tried his best to not feel too weird about the way that he would sometimes kick his foot under the table and flash him a hidden grin. When the bills had come, Steve too had paid for it, grabbing Jonathan’s slip of paper before he could even look at it and fished for his wallet.

“This is a _date, _remember?” he had smirked under his breath, tongue clicking hard as he popped out the ‘t’.

Jonathan wanted to remind him that it didn’t seem fair—Steve had paid for practically every single meal they had gone out together for since the beginning of summer—but he didn’t have the chance to say so. Steve had slipped out of the booth, steered himself towards the cash register and then, without so little as a smile directed towards the waitress as he paid, had motioned for Jonathan to follow him out the door.

Now they were sipping beers as they laid on the hood of Steve’s car, talking quietly as the slippery chords of an electric guitar filtered out through the open windows from the stereo. Steve had put on the _The Cars_ cassette—it seemed to be one of the only things in terms of music they could agree upon—and he was talking about _The Golden Girls. _Like, a lot. About the latest episode he had seen the other night and how the other girls treated Rose poorly—which according to Steve wasn’t fair because she was actually just a sweetheart and sort of reminded him of his own grandmother—and oh, how Dorothy is basically like a fifty year old version of Nancy, and Jonathan can’t help it: he starts to laugh, nearing spitting out his latest mouthful of beer.

“What’s so funny?” Steve asks, pushing himself up and Jonathan tries for calm, but keeps on snickering regardless.

“Steve, my _mom _doesn’t even watch _The Golden Girls._”

He thinks Steve might have coloured slightly at the comment, but it was hard to tell—the shadows from the cars headlights were heavy and thick, and the only thing he was clearly able to make out was the line of his lips, pressed thin in disapproval.

“It’s a good show,” Steve reiterates slowly, vaguely pleading, and Jonathan finds himself snorting again, earning him a small punch to the arm.

“Are there any other terribly embarrassing interests you have that I need to know about?” Jonathan fires back quickly before Steve can land another hit and the other boy just smirks, a lone finger running mindlessly alongside the edge of his beer can before he takes another quick sip.

“Hmm—Rupert Holmes’ _Escape? _Probably my favorite song of all time.”

“_No_—,” Jonathan gasps. “The piña colada song?”

Steve’s smirk turns smug and he nods.

“The one and only.”

Jonathan dissolves into poorly concealed laughter again for the second time in less than a minute and Steve swats at him, the weight of his curled fingers barely there as they press into his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan tries, still laughing as he sits up.

“You’re not,” Steve drawls, but the annoyed looking furrow to his brows is betrayed by the small curve tugging at his lips. Errantly, his fingers fall upon his hand, his thumb drawing smooth circles against his palm. Then, less confidently: “I work tomorrow, but if you want we can stay out here a little bit longer?”

Jonathan just nods, trying not to think of his mother back home waiting for him, quietly unrepentant, and watches as Steve finishes off his beer, sending the can careening towards the cliff side with a long, arcing throw. It takes a few seconds, but eventually they hear the expected small _sploosh_ as the can hits the calm waters surface at the bottom of the pit. It echoes slightly—the emptiness of the night staccatoed only by the hum of the car’s engine and the quiet of the music—and Jonathan can’t help but to think about how all of this just feels...nice.

Slightly different, a little less than their normal, but nice.

Everything, he thinks, was the same. Just more so. More smiles. More small touches. More quiet whispers under their breath. More subtle reminders that when Steve liked something (someone), he really, _really _liked it (them).

Steve’s fingers curl suddenly between the spaces of his fingers, flexing experimentally before squeezing tight, and Jonathan smiles.

“_Hey_—,”

Jonathan looks left and Steve is right _there_, a smile half hidden by the shadows. He’s quiet, staring at him with the unnerving sort of intensiveness that makes Jonathan’s stomach twist with nerves—the good kind for once—and Jonathan knows what comes next. He leans in, Steve meeting the kiss with a quick sort of neediness, a hand pressing against his jaw and pulling him in close. There’s a shaky exhale and a hand drifting to his thigh. Distantly, the music continues to play and the car continues to hum, and Steve keeps pushing him (pushing him down, pushing a tongue into his mouth, pushing a hand against his groin) and Jonathan thinks he tastes like sunshine—like the type of happiness he’s not quite sure how to handle—but he closes his eyes and doesn’t push him away.

Tomorrow, he thinks, is a new day. And maybe it's then he'll find the courage to ask the things that really needed to be answered. But until then...he had this. And for now, it was enough. It was more than enough. 

"Car?" Steve murmurs, and Jonathan just nods, sliding off the hood and following Steve to the backseat. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The boys, getting to be...happy? Weird.


	15. Chapter 15

There are things he can’t explain, still. Things that still claw at his insides (like a cowardly tongue and terrifyingly repressed emotions and suffocating placations), but Jonathan is _trying. _He is trying his best to confront these things. He is trying, and trying, and trying and he knows that he has to try _harder_, because his time is almost up.

He is leaving.

This Saturday he is_ leaving_ and he and Steve still haven’t talked about_ it. _

"Why did you bring a movie where I have to _read_?" Next to him, Steve nudges his arm, a thick purse to otherwise kissable looking lips.

“Sorry,” Jonathan chuckles quietly. His mind swims. A voice inside of him is nudging him—screaming at him, really—to ask the important questions that really matter. He doesn’t. Instead, he diverts with an almost scornful: “You’re the one who wanted to actually watch one of my ‘art films’, remember?”

Steve fidgets for a moment, as if he was considering arguing against the fact, but all that comes out is a short lived sigh. Then, without further protest, his head lolls back against Jonathan’s shoulder and the silence between them continues.

Jonathan exhales.

The weirdly floral scent of Steve’s hairspray is mixing heavy with his aftershave and Jonathan tries not to think about the slow moving constricting feeling that is creeping across his chest. He tries not to think about the few short weeks between then and now. Of that first _real_ moment of romantic realization in the bedroom between them, followed by the sweeping tide of lost days. Of stolen kisses and lazy afternoons on the couch and of long, fleeting moments spent cruising in their cars. Instead, what he focuses on is Steve’s fingers playing with the outline seam of his jeans, idle fingers digging gently into the rough material. He tries not to think. He tries not to and fails.

Six days. What he has is six days before he leaves for New York City.

Everything else is ready. His mother has booked the weekend off work for the drive. There was a short-lived argument filled with tears when he presented her with a cheque with all his savings so she wouldn’t have to worry about the bills. Will has been asking if he’s coming back for the Thanksgiving holiday. Nancy called him from Pennsylvania, reminding him to bring a jacket; the east coast is a lot cooler this time of year then in Indiana. But he and Steve had stopped going into his bedroom because last week when he saw that all the posters on his walls had been taken down, he froze like a deer stuck in the headlights of an oncoming car.

Since then, Steve’s avoided the space like a skittish dog.

“She’s pretty,” Steve murmurs and Jonathan blinks, nodding. Momentarily, his eyes linger on the television screen, trying their best to concentrate on the black and white glow of the curved glass, the doe-eyed Anna Karina giggling alongside the slick Sami Frey.

_Six days,_ his brain sings.

Anna Karina’s prettiness be damned, he just can’t concentrate.

You see: it’s a better part of three weeks later and he has finally begun to start dissecting it. That _‘it_’ being the unspoken elephant sitting heavy in the room. That ‘_it_’ being Steve’s inability to accept or even _acknowledge _the fact that Jonathan will be moving to a different state. And it’s a better part of those three weeks later when everything breaks, so simple and expected, that he’d practically been begging for it. Because Jonathan had known, deep down, with all the lost days and hours and minutes spent between him and Steve—between all of those stolen kisses and lazy afternoons and fleeting moments spent cruising in cars—that it was useless ignoring it.

Steve, with his hard pressed habit of ignoring conflict, smiling falsely and speaking words that he thought others wanted to hear in order to avoid the sting of rebounding loneliness, was still trying to.

But eventually, both of them would be forced to deal with repercussions and fallout of simply shoving it all down—of swallowing any and all mild moments of anxiety and pressing them into uneasy smiles for the sake of Steve’s continued desire to _pretend_. But this mistake—_this _particular looming reality—was something that Jonathan knew simply couldn’t be ignored forever.

And he hates himself, because as much as he wants to put the blame firmly on Steve and Steve alone, it's his fault too.

The first time that Steve had froze up after walking into the hollow space that was formerly his messy bedroom, Jonathan had grabbed his wrist, swerving like a car to avoid the incoming collision and dragged him from the room. There had been a quick lie; a quick ‘_actually’ _that fell from his lips. And what followed afterwards was a flood.

_Actually_, _Steve, there’s something I want to show you in the living room._

_Actually, let’s go for a drive._

_Actually, I’m kind of hungry. _

Actually, actually, actually.

Anything, _actually,_ to avoid the unpleasantness of seeing Steve's anxiety physically manifested.

But Jonathan couldn’t swerve anymore and the accident was coming because Steve still hadn’t _moved. _

Jonathan blinks again and feels the anxiety in his gut harden.

He had tried once. To have _the _conversation just a few days after their first date, long before Steve’s face had shattered in his bedroom, the sight of his empty shelves slicing his smile in two. It had started with a casual, ‘_So this fall_—’, and Steve's smile had slipped, just for a second, before he brashly proclaimed not to worry about it. Not yet.

So Steve would continue to smile and nudge his shoulders and make bad jokes and continue to call him silly pet names like Johnny-boy and Jon, and they had a conversation with Robin and she apologized about what happened at the movie theatre. And then one night the three of them had gotten really, really high and Robin had giggled that it was so funny things had turned out like this, and also _hello, Byers, I’m also gay!_, and suddenly everything between Steve and Robin made _sense_.

Robin also liked to tease the fact that Steve's crush on Jonathan has been happening since like, _forever, _only that he was blind, and really oblivious, because honestly he never _shut up_ about you, Jonathan, not even for a second. And on your graduation? Like way back in June? Even then Steve couldn’t stop _staring_ at you because he said you looked sick and wondered if something had happened, and _aw_, isn’t that sweet?

Steve had blushed furiously, elbowing Robin in the ribs to an embarrassingly desperate_ please_ _shut up, Rob’, _and Jonathan had just laughed.

“I wasn’t sick, just hungover,” he had smirked and Robin had coo’d, “See, dingus’, he was fine; all that worrying for nothing.”

And Nancy? Nancy would smile politely and they would still do lunch and talk on the phone and there was this strained moment where she realized things between Steve and Jonathan had become better again. More than better, but rather that they were _together_, because on the day they went to say their goodbyes to her, Steve had stepped out of his car, walking up the driveway to the Wheeler’s front door and he had smiled at Jonathan in the same way he used to smile at her. Standing next to Jonathan, small hands clutched around the handle of her suitcase, Nancy saw it. She saw it and her lip trembled for all of two seconds before she steeled her gaze and then she hugged Jonathan tightly, telling him that she was so happy things between them had worked themselves out.

“I mean it,” Nancy had whispered into the crook of his neck. “You deserve to be happy, Jon.”

And Jonathan? Jonathan was fine with this. With all of it. All of it was fine.

It was fine because it had been easy to pretend and easy to be swept away in that gut warming feeling of something _new _and _exciting_ and _god, did he ever like kissing Steve. _He liked taking drives with Steve, liked holding his hand loosely as they blasted bad music over fuzzy sounding speakers down Hawkins backroads. He liked sneaking small touches and smiles in between bites of food at the diner. He liked getting high with him at the junkyard and making out in the backseat of his car. He _liked_ being able to have Steve over for dinner or a movie, curling up next to him on the couch, even if his brother sometimes did give them strange looks.

It was all fine until it wasn’t and that moment was now.

So this is how it goes. This is what snaps him out of his willful ignorance. This is when the car crashes.

It’s a muggy Monday evening, and he and Steve are _finally_ getting to watch that movie they had planned to all those weeks ago back in July. Jonathan brings out Luc Godard’s _Bande à part _and Steve grins brightly, admitting almost a little too eagerly that the first time when he had invited him over for the movie that Robin was never going to show.

“I lied,” he grins. “She didn’t know about it; I just wanted to spend more time with you by myself.”

And Jonathan laughs and Steve laughs with him, because _god, Steve, didn’t you think about what that even meant? Robin was right. _Steve turns bright red, muttering for him to shut up, and drags him into the living room by his wrist.

Steve, however, isn’t as into the film as much as Jonathan is (a prediction that Robin said you didn’t need glasses to see would have happened), but Jonathan can’t concentrate either. His gut feels heavy, like hot lead, and _god_, he almost feels sick.

Just sick.

“Wait—what did they just say?” Steve asks, and Jonathan blinks again. He realizes he didn’t catch the subtitles on the screen either and Steve’s fingers prod against his thigh, a raking, silent: _c’mon, tell me. _

Jonathan’s eyes trace the screen, trying to find any form of familiarity as to where they were in the plot, only the movie doesn't matter, it really doesn’t, and the words pop out automatically:

“So I’m leaving this Saturday. You know that right?”

The movie keeps playing, Anna Karina slyly declaring her newfound love for Claude Brasseur and Steve’s fingers curl against the jut of his knee, going still. The shadowed bodies of the two lovers fall across the bed through the glow of the old blocky, wooden RCA television set and Jonathan can feel it: the quiver of Steve’s hand, just briefly, before he shoves it deep between them, hiding it in the crevice of the couch cushion.

“Her eyes are really beautiful,” Steve then says in a jarring non sequitur, only he’s not looking at Jonathan. He’s staring at the screen with the most focus he’s had all night, as if he was really into it, like as if he really _loved_ the film. The hardness in Jonathan’s gut compacts and then explodes, pushing it up and into his lungs.

He knows Steve heard him.

He knows he did.

What he doesn’t know is why they can’t talk about it.

“_Steve—,_” Jonathan says again, and the quietness of his own voice is unsettling, sounding distant and tired to his own ears.

The unspoken refrain of, ‘_I’m leaving’_, lingers heavy in the air and Steve flinches, the entirety of his body going stiff again like that day in his bedroom.

What comes next is to be expected, but Jonathan really wishes that it wasn’t.

“Can we not do this? Not now?” Steve’s voice comes just as quiet, just as soft (just as tired), and Jonathan finds himself shaking his head, an abrupt and exasperated _no._

Quickly, Steve’s hand pulls out from the crevice of the cushion between them as he shifts away and Jonathan can hear it: the near silent _tch_ clicking from his teeth followed by a weary sounding sigh.

“It’s six days from now,” Jonathan tells him and he sounds like a ghost, his eyes flickering back towards the screen at the sound of a girlish giggle before falling back to Steve, unwavering.

Teeth grind and without looking at him, at his eyes, his face, Steve quietly lies.

“...is it?” he says. “Well, shit. I didn’t know.”

And Jonathan knows that he isn’t (and never has been) the best at communicating. He is mediocre at it in every way except in his exact perfect grasp of _knowing_ that he is mediocre. He sees it in his inability to easily make friends, or how he can’t properly tell his mother how he truly feels about her; about their family. He knows that it’s all a by-product of his upbringing—of being forced to navigate the minefield of a too-fractured home that was held together by the illusion of security whenever Lonnie tried to do something _nice_ to make up for the fact that he was a raging asshole—and while he loves his mom _so_ much and _so_ dearly, she is sometimes _too much_.

He’ll never tell her this, this he knows.

He has never been able to tell her how he truly feels about his dad either (hiding in his room seemed easier), nor has he ever been the type of person to put himself first when he genuinely needs it (because he’s been raising Will alongside his mom since he was twelve), but he has this amazing mental clarity, the kind that makes everyone turn to him for anchoring solidity. And even though he never really knows what to say to make things fully_ right_, it’s enough that he is reliable and dependable and he can see through the bullshit. So maybe that’s why his mother doesn’t try hiding her anxieties from him. Maybe that’s why Will comes to him first with his problems and not to their mom. Jonathan sees it. He saw through Steve’s all those months ago—the fake smiles and the slippery words—and what he sees now is the biggest lie that Steve has ever told him.

“_Steve,_” Jonathan tries again, and he is begging really, for _something_—for honesty or anger or just...just something. Something other than the ugly, obvious lies, and the harsh quietness that had settled between them, enmeshed by stiffness of Steve’s whiteknuckled fist. Because he doesn’t know what to say or what to do, only that he knows it’s something that can’t be fixed by hiding in his room. He’s not a kid anymore and Steve isn’t Lonnie. Steve is...well, Steve...he…

“We need to talk about it—,” Jonathan presses.

“—do we? We’re in the middle of a movie, Jonathan.” The falter is there, the nervous stumbling of Steve’s fraying confidence, the sharpness of his words betraying the quiet of his voice.

“—boys, do you want some popcorn?”

The light to the living room flicks on and Jonathan can hear it: the sharp suck of air from his left. His mother is standing there holding a large pyrex mixing bowl filled to the brim and Jonathan almost nods yes, _sure_—anything to get her to leave—but then Steve is standing, his face plastered thick with a stomach sickening smile.

“Actually, Mrs. B,” he says. And there it is: the beginning of another lie. “I was just about to head home. I work early in the morning and Keith might actually fire me if he finds me napping in the breakroom again.”

His mother just nods, chuckling lightly and offers Steve a warm, “Drive safe, Steven,” before disappearing again back into the kitchen.

Steve, Jonathan notes, is two steps behind her.

The car has crashed and Steve is fleeing the scene.

Jonathan scrambles off the couch, thinking that he actually might _leave_ without so much as a goodbye, but then Steve pauses for a moment, turning back towards Jonathan as if it was an afterthought. His smile falters, the cracks as blinding as the whites of his teeth, and Jonathan flinches. That long lost drowning feeling he had struggled with all summer has returned and it is filling up his lungs.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Steve then asks, stepping forward almost hesitantly.

His smile is still there, still terribly _wrong,_ and Jonathan wishes that he hadn’t lost count of how many times he had seen it like this in the past few days.

“You don’t work tomorrow,” is all Jonathan offers quietly in return. The hardness of his words causes Steve to flinch and he steps back, eyes falling.

_“_I..._Jonathan_—,”

And from the strain in Steve's voice, clear as the water at the local community pool as he trails off sharply, Jonathan knows this conversation isn't going to happen.

“_Just_...go home, Steve,” he sighs. “We’ll keep...pretending.”

The words feel like acid on his tongue and Jonathan waits for Steve to correct him.

He doesn’t, and when Jonathan finds the courage to finally just _look_ at him, Steve’s gaze is still glued to the floor, fingers trembling like a leaf.

Jonathan blinks and for the first time in his life realizes that Steve Harrington has nothing to say.

There’s a pounding feeling in his head and his lungs feel like cardboard, and Jonathan blinks again, brushing past Steve in a messy silence that almost feels like the beginning of the end. He doesn’t wait to see if Steve is following him (he knows he isn’t), and instead finds himself locked in his room.

He flops down on his bed and tries not to scream.

In the quiet of the early evening, Jonathan can hear the final swan songs of the evening larks mixed faintly with the roar of a car engine starting up and being swallowed up by the ever growing distance as it peels down the road. There’s a harsh exhale that falls from his lips and he tries not to think about how all of this is going to end. About what it means that Steve didn’t correct him, didn’t follow him, and didn’t even _try_ to explain himself.

And Jonathan knows that there are no more ‘_actually_’s. No more swerves.

And it’s not like there aren’t a million other teenagers living like this—sad and unsure and knowing with a certain sense of awareness that their summer romance is coming to an end (because remember: Jonathan is mediocre in more ways than one with the exception that he has always had the amazing mental clarity to always see through the bullshit)—so he doesn’t try to fight it anymore.

But at least, he thinks, he did try even if Steve didn’t.

\---

The phone rings just past midnight and a weary Joyce knocks on Jonathan’s door. Her eyes are tired and there’s a warning to the way her lips pull tight as she tells him it’s Steve—_unless it’s an emergency, Jonathan, he shouldn’t be calling this late. _

Jonathan apologizes, a murmured, “I’m sorry, _shit_, I’m sorry,” as he slips by her and finds the phone cord strung tight with the receiver resting flat on the kitchen table.

There’s the briefest of seconds where he wonders if it actually _is_ an emergency—that maybe their fight could be put behind them with the wash of something new to focus on—but he doesn’t have the time to worry because his mom is lingering in his peripheries down the hall, her housecoat pulled tight across her chest as she taps her foot with an expected impatience.

He picks of the receiver, turning his back to her and finds himself speaking a quiet, “_Hey_—,”

His mother coughs and Jonathan hurries himself along, ignoring the burning sensation pressing heavy in his chest.

“Steve, unless it’s an emergency, I can’t talk,” he quickly tries to explain, even though he really, _really _wants to.

“—_tomorrow,_” Steve cuts him off, and Jonathan can think he hears something akin to a sharp inhale, like the settling of something difficult being scrapped off his tongue. “We can talk about it...tomorrow.”

And there are a million things that Jonathan wants to say and ask, things like _why do you sound so sad?_, or _why couldn’t we have done this earlier?_, or more importantly, _why hasn’t your smile been _real _in how many days?_

But the way Steve speaks, with all the forced gentleness of someone very tired and very empty acutely reminds Jonathan of himself at the beginning of summer. It’s the same way he spoke to Nancy when he quietly asked her to come down to the old park down near Melvald’s.

And—_oh._

Jonathan thinks he should feel something more than just understanding, but it all clicks into place, because at the end of the summer, Steve Harrington is staying in Hawkins, Indiana and Jonathan Byers is moving to New York City, New York.

“Okay,” he mouths quietly into the receiver. Just okay.

“And Jonathan?” Steve adds, voice small and filled with all the terrifyingly understood exhaustion that Jonathan wishes he didn’t hear. “Tell your mom I’m sorry for waking her up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a quick, hot two months. No biggie!


	16. Chapter 16

Jonathan wakes up to the sound of his mother on the telephone, a quiet conversation happening just down the hall that starts with his mother’s pacifying reassurances towards Steve that all was forgiven for calling so late and ends with her promising to pass on his messages to Jonathan.

"As soon as he gets up, I'll let him know. Mmhmm. Okay. _Yes_. Bye.” A laugh. “Bye, Steve."

Jonathan squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to think about the sudden unfurling of discomfort radiating from his gut. It was too early to think about this. Too early to worry about his impending conversation with Steve.

It doesn't matter, however: his alarm goes off 5 minutes later and reality beckons to him as his mother hollars down the hall about breakfast being almost ready and asking if he's seen her keys.

When he finally emerges from his room, there’s a plate of half cold pancakes waiting for him on the table with two sticky, empty plates already in the sink. His mother, hair slightly damp and clothing wrinkled, is hurrying around the kitchen, still looking for her keys in order to go to work.

“Steve called again,” she tells him absently, picking up a stack of mail and brusquely setting it back down. She grabs the jug of syrup off the counter near the stove and _ah_—there they are!—before she sets the jug on the table in front of him. The keys jangle in her fingers as she mills towards the counters again, pulling out a fork from one of the drawers, dropping it on the table next to the syrup. “He said he’ll be over today around 3.”

Jonathan just nods, pulling in his chair and tries not to think about the growing sensation of anxiety that was bubbling in his chest. 3 p.m was a long time away—a whole days worth of time, really—and he barely feels the quick kiss of his mother's lips brushing against his forehead, nor her warm reminder to make sure both he and Will eat something today other than potato chips and frozen pizza.

“There’s leftovers in the fridge,” she calls after him from the hall, grabbing her work smock off the hooks near the door. “Hops will be dropping El off later, too. I’ll see both of you tonight after supper time. Love you!”

Jonathan thinks he may have mouthed a methodical, near habitual, _‘Love you too’,_ in response, and then his mother was gone, the door to the house slammed shut in a whirlwind of accustomed morning lateness brought forth by her constant pattern of misplacing things.

Picking up the jug of syrup, Jonathan pours a healthy amount onto his plate and watches with a fuzzy feeling of dissociation as it pools around the pancakes, drowning them in a lake. 

In the living room, he can hear the muted volume of early morning cartoons and the occasional chuckle of laughter coming from his brother. There’s the buzz drip of the coffee pot, still percolating and half full from a quickly poured cup that had been promptly forgotten by the sink. The fridge is buzzing too, the tubes of freon gas humming loudly as they fight for space in the dead air against the quiet drip of the tap, a repetitive _plink, plink, plink_ bouncing off the dirty dishes sitting in the metallic basin.

He thinks he should eat. His pancakes are more than cold at this point, but when he looks up from his plate and across the table to the white analogue numbers that are slowly ticking forward on the stove face, he just feels sick.

_This is just like when you broke up with Nancy_, a voice in his head reminds him. The same feeling, the same lethargic energy of having to _wait _for something that you know is coming. And like what happened with Nancy too, the voice reminds him that what’s coming is really the only option that makes _sense. _It was to be expected, really.

They had only been seeing each other for less than a month. And it was crazy to believe that something as new and fresh as their relationship was going to endure something as monumental and long-lasting as a four-year stint of long-distance.

Jonathan sighs, pushing out from the table, his chair scraping against the floor. He doesn’t touch the pancakes and instead sits himself in front of the television with Will. The cartoons are almost too childish for him at this age—too silly—but the familiarity of watching Flintstone reruns—of knowing the lines and gags and each and every catchphrase of the characters—is almost enough to set his mind at ease and distract from the overwhelming sensation of dread that was slowly unfolding across his skin in a slow albeit steady crawl.

The white analogue numbers on the kitchen stove face slowly roll forward, an echoed tick of the winding mechanism following him into the living room as the 9 slipped into 10, and Jonathan jerks off the couch, fingers reaching for the volume dial on the old television set. He cranks it up louder and Will doesn't complain, the pair of them lost to the end credits of a Hannah-Barbara production and he’s greeted by the theme song to _The Jetsons_ trilling from the tinny speakers.

\---

The rest of the day passes by with a mind-numbing slowness that is only tempered by his constant attempts at distracting himself with the mundane. He does the dishes. He reheats leftovers for their lunch despite Will’s groaning about how he really wanted the pizza in the freezer. He looks over his entrance information to NYU while perched on the couch while Will occupies himself at the coffee table, the surface of which was quickly consumed by an array of crayons and papers. El is dropped off and Jonathan reads a book with her before she abandons him in favour of Will, the two of them deciding on a movie to watch.

Time crawls by at a snail's pace and Jonathan, despite the distractions, always seems to find his eyes drifting towards the clock.

3 p.m. arrives and then 3:30. It's almost 4 o'clock when he finally works up the nerve to decide and call Steve, only to find relief when he hears the familiar purr of his BMW pulling into the driveway. Jonathan greets him at the door and the only explanation Steve offers is an awkward, almost sheepish, “Sorry, I was with Robin. We were...talking.”

There’s a quick kiss to the corner of his lips as Steve steps inside, Jonathan accepting his answer at face value and he doesn’t pry into the specifics. He can only imagine how their conversation went and the details of how Robin advised him to handle _this_ particular situation are something he’d rather not know. It’s not that he doesn’t like Robin—in fact, he likes her a great deal—but thinking about how she probably placated Steve and helped him navigate their upcoming break-up seems almost traitorous, even if it was understood that she was and always would be Steve's best friend.

Rather, Jonathan just nods and leads Steve into the house. As they shuck their shoes and Steve hangs his jacket on the hooks by the door, Jonathan considers his options. The kitchen was far too open and susceptible to prying ears, and the living room was currently being occupied by Will and El. That left his bedroom with it’s empty walls and boxed belongings; a place that Steve had avoided like the plague and Jonathan had shepherded him away from at every possibility since his initial reaction to it some weeks ago. He supposes, however, that Steve’s aversion to the room at this point doesn’t really matter now. It’s an unkind thought, but a larger part of him is too anxious to feel guilty about it.

“C’mon,” he says, and wordlessly, Steve follows.

Jonathan enters first, stepping into the room and only pauses when he realizes that Steve has stopped himself on the threshold of the doorframe. He turns and finds the other caught up in a nervous sort of energy that draws shadows of worry across every line of his face. Blankly, Jonathan realizes very quickly, very astutely, that it was because this is the first time Steve has ever really had the chance to _look_ at the space that was formerly his bedroom. It’s vastly different—a shell of its former self—and he grounds himself in understanding as he waits patiently for Steve's reaction as his eyes scan the room as though assessing it for danger. A second passes and then another with Steve’s fingers idly thrumming mid air before they find the safety of the crook of his elbow. Then, he exhales deeply and finally enters. His eyes are still wandering, still taking in the emptiness of the too impersonal room and Jonathan finds himself sitting on the edge of his bed.

“Man, I miss your posters,” is all Steve finally says and Jonathan just nods, a tongue pressing thickly to his cheek.

“I guess I could have left them up, but Will said I need to bring _something_ to my dorm to decorate it. Apparently books don’t count.”

“Did you really need to bring all those too?” Steve quickly questions, almost judgmentally, motioning to the near empty bookshelf near the door.

“I mean..._no_. Probably not. But I—,”

“—like to read,” Steve finishes for him, and there's a small smile hugging his cheeks.

Jonathan nods and Steve exhales heavily, taking two large steps across the room and joins him on the bed. He flops down next to him, hands cradling the back of his head like a pillow, a nervous foot jostling against the mattress.

"Ceiling's still the same," Steve then remarks. A finger points to the corner above the desk and Jonathan's gaze follows him. "Still has that old cobweb where the _Pink Floyd _poster was."

Jonathan finds himself chuckling nervously as he nods.

"Well...cobwebs don't really count as decorations. Thought they could stay."

"Yeah, but your new room mate will be less likely to judge you for that then for putting up a poster that basically screams: '_Hello! I smoke pot!'_," Steve smirks.

Jonathan lays down next to him and he can feel the chuckling in his chest turn genuine as he mutters a quiet, "_Fuck_ off." Steve responds in kind by pulling at his waist, drawing him in close as he scooches across the mattress, a breathy: "Don't be mean, Johnny-boy," tickling his cheek.

There's a moment where time suspends. Where Jonathan can just hear the steady breathing of Steve as he settles himself in close and shifts again, curling in close. He thinks that maybe the talk won't happen. That maybe Steve had rethought his decision. Because all of this was so painfully _normal_ and a part of Jonathan almost wished that it would never end. He could pretend like Steve, at least for just one last moment. He could make it as though their summer wasn't going to end.

Jonathan blinks, a painful and hoarse sort of laugh almost erupting from the depths of his chest and he tries not to let it slip out.

He wasn’t like Steve. Not at all. He had always been something of a pragmatist and he _knew_ everything was different now, even if the stars in the sky were the exact same ones they had sat under at the beginning of summer by the edge of Steve's pool. There was no pretending, not even just for one day, because he had known the moment Steve's voice turned soft and weary on the phone the night before that it was over. Now he's waiting for it—for that facet of Steve's resolve—to make its return.

“Hey, Jonathan?”

“Yeah?” he hums, and Steve shifts onto his back, the box springing crying under his weight.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he starts.

There’s a hitch of his breath, followed by a too quiet exhale and Jonathan just nods, murmuring a soft, “I know,” in a quiet acknowledgement.

“I just needed…” Steve starts again. “_Wanted_,” he corrects himself. “One last night. Where things were normal.”

“Things haven’t been normal for a while now, Steve,” Jonathan tries gently. His hand snakes to Steve’s side, pulling at his elbow and he sighs, his arm falling as his head presses fully into the pillow. Then, Jonathan feels it: the hesitant press of fingers that Steve was known for, pulling gently at his own. Jonathan’s fingers curl around his almost instinctively, a thumb searching for the smooth line of skin that scarred the flesh near his knuckles.

“Hey. Are you...happy?” Steve then whispers.

And here it is. Here's the wet sort of weariness that Jonathan had been waiting for.

“Happy…?” Jonathan hesitates, swallowing thickly, his throat practically clicking. Because all of this seems vaguely familiar; a distant throwback to the kind but not-so kind conversation he had had with Nancy at the beginning of the summer. And even if he had been expecting it, expecting the same softness of Steve’s voice—the same gentle questioning—it throws him through a loop. Jonathan knows where this is going and Steve just nods, fingers tightly curling against his own, practically squeezing them. They feel hot, Jonathan thinks, and he tries not to laugh again, a distant almost empty feeling sloshing around in his head as his chest constricts at the sight of Steve turning shy. It was as if what he had asked was somehow too intimate and personal and it makes Jonathan feel dizzy.

“_Yeah_,” Steve repeats softly, licking his lips.

“Happy how?”

“Like...what in your life makes you happy?” Steve prods again.

“I’m happy that I’m going to school,” Jonathan hears himself speak. His response automatic—a remembered intonation that he has repeated time and time again because going to NYU was his dream and he_ had_ to be happy, even if he wasn’t—even if sometimes he wondered if he was making the right decision. But even to his own ears, he found that he sounded far, far away, as if his voice was not his own.

“_Ah_,” Steve breathes, caught off guard. Just _ah._

Briefly, Jonathan wonders if Steve had been expecting him to say ‘no’.

Steve exhales again, his breath sounding short, and Jonathan fidgets, twisting right and curling in closer, trying to catch sight of the other's face. He didn’t think he had to say it—he thought Steve already _knew_ how he felt about school—but Steve isn’t looking at him. Rather, his eyes are drifting up towards the ceiling, his face frozen and slightly pinched as he rolls his fingers along the edge of the mattress. As if hearing Jonathan say these things had not been what he expected.

He's nervous, Jonathan realizes, and as his breath hitches in his throat, he feels himself beginning to match.

Then, a quieter: “Does this…”

Jonathan watches as Steve turns on his side to meet his gaze. He licks his lips, his mouth suddenly dry, the words catching in his throat and grinding against his teeth. His words sound strained and shaky and Jonathan just blinks. “What about this? Does _this_ make you happy?”

The unspoken '_us'_ is there, hidden in the fray of Steve's unsure timbre and Jonathan feels like he’s been punched in the gut. Like all the air has been pushed out of his lungs and into his head, setting his brain on fire. He realizes Steve is staring at him now; he had shifted fully onto his side, his mouth slightly parted and eyes wide and waiting for a response.

He doesn’t want to laugh anymore. Instead, Jonathan inhales, swallowing past his nerves. There’s a slight exhale from Steve in response and Jonathan’s head tilts ever so slightly, a confused echo to Steve’s query, because he’s not really even sure what_ type _of question this is, or what Steve really means, or what he’s trying to get at. Rather, Jonathan falters, his mouth hanging open, then pressing shut again before he finally finds the right words to speak.

“Like...right now?” he tries, still not fully understanding.

There’s another pause and Steve shifts even closer, their bodies practically melded at the hip.

“Right now,” he repeats. “Like _this_...are you happy?” Steve asks again, his voice is stiffer and his eyes hard.

And _oh._

Jonathan gets it and thinks this might be it.

This is a script.

His mind buzzes slowly and he thinks he can hear it: the shallow anxiety carving deep strokes within Steve’s breathing and the messy sadness kept tempered by gaping stitches—a stiff voice; a furrowed brow. This is the breaking point and he's supposed to parrot back that he isn’t. He is supposed to say that he isn’t happy. He should lie and say that everything about this—about this summer, and his anxiety, and his break up with Nancy, and his crush on Steve—was the worst thing that ever happened to him. That wishing for things he told himself could never be true, like the returned affection of some too cool jock, was somehow worse than hiding who he really was. He thinks about the constant ache in his chest and that first time he saw Steve’s smile: the real one. Of that pivotal moment in the movie theatre that one hot afternoon where he realized that Steve wasn’t just Steve. That Steve was someone _different_ and new and not who he thought he was.

Steve was someone who liked cheesy romance films and could probably cook better than he could. Steve was someone with a father like his, who got high like he did, and liked babbling about the greatness of Neil Diamond. He had a best friend like Robin Buckley, a girl whom he couldn’t tell his biggest problems to because it would mean revealing secrets that weren’t his to reveal. Steve was kind like that. Steve liked _Journey_ and three day old pepperoni pizza, but Chicago deep dish was his favorite. He liked singing loudly to the radio, no matter what was playing, even if he couldn't really sing, and much to Jonathan's amusement he kept trying. Steve was someone who was like sunshine. He clung desperately to the good moments, ignoring all the bad, blinding the shadows of any and all discomfort with the whites of his teeth because he was used to pretending to be that someone that he wasn’t. He sometimes forgot that the people close to him could see this about him. That those who he let in beyond the false veneer of his too large smiles could see when he was upset or angry or even sad.

And right now, Jonathan thinks, Steve looks sad. Sadder than he’s ever seen him look, even though his voice is hard and his eyes distant. They’re watery, Jonathan thinks. Like he’s holding back tears.

Steve’s lips twitch and his mouth presses closed, holding back his impatience to Jonathan’s lengthy silence.

And still, he doesn’t speak.

Jonathan thinks that maybe he should explain this. That he knows Steve is sad. At least then he would understand why he doesn’t want to answer him. That this final moment—of them—was something he was trying to memorize. That these last few moments of them laying on the bed together as Jonathan remembers all the things he loved about Steve were going to the photographic memory of a sort of relationship with a person he never thought possible. Of the jarring dissonance of who he thought Steve was and who he really is. And that if he had to tell him why he was struggling to answer—of why he wanted to lie—it would be something like this:

Because once upon a time, Jonathan Byers was a seven year old kid who wanted nothing more than to leave Hawkins, Indiana. He had dreams of moving far, far away, to a city he’d never seen except in magazines or mentioned in the newspaper or seen on TV. He had dreams to go to a school called New York University. It was a place where he could reinvent himself. Wash away the past. Live for himself.

It was picture perfect.

There would be no small town politics. No stress. No moments spent suffocating in his room.

It was a place where he could live for something other than his too small house with his too fractured family. Away from the sometimes-not-all-the-times sensation of having cardboard lungs, because every once in a while his mother would crack and Jonathan was all there was, filling in the holes left by an absentee father like the weakest of glues.

And for the longest of times, he had never felt so alone.

Even with the love of his mother and brother, he felt like an outlier. Just someone waiting for the right moment to finally find a path that wasn't laid out for him and to be allowed to tread the grass into dirt on his own. The story was supposed to end with him graduating and leaving for New York City. He wasn’t supposed to feel scared. He wasn’t supposed to question what was worse: the grinding monotony of here, or the schism of the unknown of simply_ there. _Because there was a blip in his story when he met Steve—the real Steve—Harrington. And the unknown of a place far away from here—a place that he had never questioned wanting so badly for close to a decade—was a place without Steve.

Jonathan swallows thickly and thinks he should tell him he hates all of it. Telling Steve that he isn’t happy would make things easier. Playing along with a scripted break up and saving face and telling him that this isn’t the happiest he’s ever been in a long, long time would save them both the pain. Because he thinks about these things—about Steve and the sort of happiness he never allowed himself to even dream of—and sees the hardness in Steve’s eyes and the slight part of his lips masking an almost cloying sad.

The impending break up is only thirty seconds away and Jonathan has a decision to make.

Jonathan chooses courage for the very last time.

“Yeah,” he exhales. “I am.” He doesn’t lie. “I really am. I'm happy, Steve. With you.”

Steve’s response is almost immediate and next to him, Jonathan can feel his shuddery exhale falling thickly against his shoulder. It's a second moment where it’s almost as if Steve has been caught off guard. He doesn’t say anything at first and instead buries his face into the curve of Jonathan’s neck, a hand pulling at his hip. His fingers are trembling again, a barely noticeable waver as they dig into the fabric of his shirt. Then, Steve exhales, a tired and broken sounding:

“_Fuck_...I am too. But I can’t...it’s...”

“Steve…” Jonathan tries gently and he can feel his lungs begin to shift and change, the pooling anxiety of forgetting how to breath dragging him under.

“It’s _four _fucking_ years_, Jonathan,” Steve suddenly blurts out. “And we've been dating for, what? 3 weeks? I've had milk sitting in my refrigerator for longer than that. So what _chance_ do we have?”

It’s a quiet explosion, and this is what is left of them:

He wasn’t really able to take that photographic snapshot of their relationship in the way that he wanted to remember it. _Most_ moments he had wanted to capture this summer of them he hadn’t. Robin and Steve dancing to _Footloose_. Steve’s expression when he turned cherry red as Jonathan had exhaled the smoke of a long haul from a joint straight into his face. His uninhibited grin as he tossed stones across the lake at the cabin, the unbeaten champion of stone skipping of Lake Wasaga. The first time Steve had kissed him, and the way his face melted in relief. None of it was right; none of it remembered in the way it should be. It was all twisted and wrong, all fractured in the same way Steve’s face had been in the dying afternoon light following his argument with his father.

Instead, _this_ is what he’ll remember when he drives to New York City in five short days, face pressed thick against the hot glass of the passenger seat window:

The broken voice of Steve Harrington exhaled wet onto his skin. The tremor of his fingers on the jut of his hip. The hurt in his own chest as he recognizes the bare facts, stripped down to the flesh: that they were barely a couple, fresh faced and giddy and still running on the honeymoon high of those first eager kisses. And four years—four whole fucking years—was a long time to be sustained on something as short as a three week kiss-happy joyride. He knew this and so did Steve. He also knew Steve was right and he tries not to think about how suffocating that makes him feel.

“Say _something_,” Steve’s voice rasps against the silence.

Jonathan blinks, barely acknowledging the curl of Steve’s fingers digging deep into his flesh.

He knows if he turns to look at Steve what he’ll see is something less than. Less than the face he had sworn was picture perfect that moment in his bed, drunk, following his high school graduation. Less than the epitome of _popular_ and _aloof _and totally _too cool _to be caught dead with someone as _weird_ and _different_ as Jonathan Byers. An asshole whose face he had fucked up real bad once in tenth grade; an asshole he later avoided like he was static charged because he had done something unspoken by sleeping with his girlfriend-not-girlfriend, and continued to avoid _still _in the aftermath because there was no way a person like Steve, with his paradiscial life—a life with the car, and the big house, and the old money—would ever have _anything_ in common with him. He didn’t care what Nancy said. They couldn’t be friends. He didn’t care that when Steve smiled at him, all it was was teeth and gum. He didn’t care, he didn’t care, he didn’t _care_ and when he finally did care, he cared so damn much that it made him feel physically sick.

The only saving grace in this situation was that he had been wrong. Steve wasn’t his polar opposite. Steve wasn’t any of these things. He wasn’t. He—_he_…

“_Jonathan_—,”

Steve’s voice—a sad swan song clawing against the skin of his throat—doesn’t register at first. He is detached and numb and tired—so very, very tired—and when Jonathan exhales again, his cardboard lungs ignite and burn up in a pool of perfect clarity. He knows what he’s about to say is going to sound really, really _stupid, _like when he told Dustin they were practising aerobics, but he doesn’t really have the time to think about it.

“Milk has an expiry date, Steve.”

“I..._what?” _

Steve is looking at him like he’s grown a second head, but Jonathan barrels forward, trying not to think about how all the words he wants to say are coming out all wrong.

“It expires,” he repeats as though what he is saying is the most obvious thing in the whole entire world; like he really hopes that Steve can hear what he’s saying underneath it all. In his quiet franticness he still hasn’t come up with a better way to say it ever since the thought popped into his head mere seconds ago.

There’s a click of teeth and Steve’s brows knitting into thick, tight lines. He still doesn’t _get it, _Jonathan realizes; doesn’t hear the noisy, painful pounding of his heart, doesn’t catch sight of the way his pupils have dilated, panicked by his nerves, and Jonathan blinks, squeezing Steve’s hand even tighter, begging for him to understand.

“Just—_come with me_.”

The words slip out of his mouth before he really has a chance to digest them. Before he can fully think about the ramifications of suggesting such a thing, or how Steve is still looking at him like he’s grown not just_ two_ heads, but three.

“You hate it here,” Jonathan quickly adds, shifting onto his side. “You hate the video store and your dad and how your mom is never home and—,”

Steve cuts him off with a sharp, “_What?_ Jonathan, no, that’s—,”

“—crazy?”

Steve just nods, wide eyed and scared. Like he’s only just realizing now that the crash between them that he had been trying to avoid so hard to begin with still wasn’t fully over.

“You could find a new job,” Jonathan adds, squeezing onto Steve’s hand even tighter, as if at any given moment Steve might get up off the bed and try to flee. “Or go to school. You said you wanted to try that, right? New York has _tons_ of community colleges and I think you’d be great at it if you found a program that you were really meant to do. And you wouldn’t have to worry about your dad, or Keith, or how Mrs. Jones gave us that weird look when she caught us holding hands out near Holloway park. And I mean, I’m stuck living in student housing until at least second semester, but we could figure something out between now and Christmas…” He trails off, trying to find the space to breath, trying to find a way to make sense of all he was suggesting, words coming out quicker then he could fully comprehend. He knows he doesn’t have all the answers, but he’s trying, really _trying—_

“You could save up money,” he exhales quickly. “And I could look for a place off campus,” he adds. “With you. Maybe Robin if you talked to her, because she’s like your best friend and I—, _I _don’t know—,”

“_Jonathan_—,” Steve cuts in sharply. There’s a desperate pull at his hand, like as if Steve wants him to stop—stop talking, stop talking _crazy_—but Jonathan shakes his head, brushing him off and willing himself to continue. Everything between them had been crazy, so unexpected and unforeseen, so what was one more unbelievably insane idea added to the mix? And even though he knows he's rambling, and even though he knows he gives Steve shit on the regular for doing the exact same, he just can't help. This is it: this is his final stand.

“I just know that you staying here is _stupid_, Steve,” he pleads, trying to get him to understand. To get him to see how the pieces between them could fall flat so simply, so _easily_, and that things between them didn’t have to be broken. “Because you don’t want to be here anymore. You haven’t for a while. And maybe we won’t last. You’re right in thinking that this is crazy, because I think it’s crazy too. There _is_ milk that has been sitting in refrigerators longer than us. But moving to New York and trying something new _has_ to be better than staying here in Hawkins and waiting for the rest of your life to begin, doesn’t it?”

There’s a pause and the air in Jonathan’s lungs feels like it’s on fire again but it leaves as quickly as it came. Because there’s nothing left there inside of him to burn anymore. No more fuel. No more fear.

It’s hard to be afraid when you’re already on the edge of risking losing everything.

“Even if we break up,” Jonathan exhales, and he squeezes Steve’s fingers one last time. One last moment to be remembered. Steve is simply staring at him, just staring, and _oh_—

He pulls back, his fingers disentangling from the grip and finds Steve’s cheek instead. It’s wet and his thumb caresses the skin like it’s damp paper, fragile and readying to fall apart. “Even if we end things right here and now, you should still come to New York. You’re so much better than Hawkins-_fucking-_Indiana, Steve.”

The late summer heat rolls in through the window adjacent to the desk and as a pair, they lie on the mattress, the bedspring whistling beneath their weight with the shift of a hip; the roll of a shoulder. It’s silent. The buzzing in his mind has stopped and there’s no music. No _The Cars_, no Neil Diamond, no awful _Journey_, but instead Jonathan listens hard to Steve’s quiet breathing and the silent way his tears keep rolling down his face. It’s the best sort of sound he’s heard all summer, he thinks, better than Neil Diamond while high, better than Steve singing, because there’s nothing in that moment that tells him that things between them have changed. Instead all he can hear is his own heart still loud and needlessly noisy, still eeking furrows in an undulating pattern against the confines of his chest, the name of Steve Harrington etched as a permanent memory inside of him regardless of what happens.

There’s a shuddery exhale and Steve reaches out to rest his fingers against Jonathan’s.

“We aren’t milk,” Steve croaks out, laughing through the tears, finally _getting _it.

“No,” Jonathan parrots in return, relief visible in every line of his stupidly smiling face. “We aren’t milk.”

Steve nods, a warm smile mirroring him in just the smallest of ways. It’s real, Jonathan thinks, and he kisses him unprompted, all the boldness and nerves and impossible wants that had never gone away—moments of swallowed happiness clawing to be reborn—alight against the dry press of lips that meet him eagerly in the middle.

\---

There’s an odd sensation of finality as Jonathan stares at the odd pile of vinyls and books and clothing he’s managed to pack into too few cardboard boxes and suitcases, haphazardly arranged into the back seat of his mother’s car in a last minute rush the night before he leaves.

Soon, he’ll be leaving—he’ll wake up early tomorrow, his mother will drop Will off at the Wheeler’s, and they’ll drive 12 hours cross country to that city he’s never seen except in magazines or on TV. There will be small talk and interstate bathroom breaks; a gas station lunch of beef jerky and coca-cola and the possibility of his mother getting them lost. She has never been beyond the state line of Indiana and Jonathan, despite his best attempts at learning, still has a habit of misreading maps.

There will also be decisions to make, a conversation with her that he has to think about, because he’s not exactly sure how to tell her what he wants and how to get her to understand, or even how to make sense of what he’s planning on for the winter semester with Steve.

But he has time, he thinks, beyond that long twelve hour drive. He has a full four or five months worth of phone calls home to break the news, and _besides—_it’s hard to think about making conversation with his mother when all he’s been thinking about is Steve instead. He hasn’t stopped since that afternoon in his bedroom four days previous. About what happened after. Thinking about it makes him blush and panic and play his music even louder than usual, tuning it out, trying to work through it, which turns out well because his mother shows up with a secretive smile and a portable record player as a going away gift.

‘_It was supposed to be a surprise’_, she tells him, ‘_for when we get you to your dorm, but I figured you’d like to try it out now_’. Steve had collaborated with her and threw in copy of Neil Diamond's _Hot August Night _(‘_So your new roomie doesn’t think you have totally shit taste’_, the note had said), and even though it should have been an amazingly _great _gift, it just makes him think of sex more, and more desperately.

Jonathan blinks, shutting the trunk door, and leans against the side of the car with a heavy exhale, mind drifting. Steve should be here soon, he thinks, and just like that—_blip_—his car pulls into the driveway, crawling to a stop just to the left of him.

“Hey!” Steve calls out from the drivesides window. Jonathan hasn’t seen him since Wednesday morning—both of them had been working and the divide in their time had felt agonizing—and Jonathan almost feels that maybe he should ask if Steve really _wants_ him to get into the car because they haven’t really talked about it. About the whole sex thing. About that messy first time blowjob and about how it finally happened.

He ends up not having to: Steve drops his head to one side, giving him a long look, then swings the car door open, bounding up and out of the seat and barreling into Jonathan instead, enveloping him in a giant hug. Steve clings to him tightly, his cheek buried deep against his shoulder and Jonathan let’s go of the last vestiges of worry that had been pooling in his feet.

“Missed you too,” Jonathan says, patting him on the back when he doesn’t pull away from the usual comfortably accepted moment of a five second embrace. Steve only draws back far enough to look Jonathan in the eye, a purse to his lips and an eyebrow shot sky high as he says:

“Do you really want me to let go?”

“_No_,” Jonathan answers honestly, softly.

Steve smirks and let’s go anyways, pulling on his wrist and dragging him over towards the car.

“C’mon,” he says, slipping back into the driverseat. “We’ll take a drive. I got beer in the back too.”

Jonathan just nods, dipping into the passenger’s side and Steve beams, pulling back out the driveway with the one-handed fluid twisting of the steering wheel, his other hand snaking out across the gearstick and slipping into Jonathan’s fingers.

They drive to the quarry in relative silence, the slow hum of the crackling radio fuzzing as they intercept the dirt road and swath of tall pine trees leading up to the pit. It’s only when the car begins to slow that Steve begins to talk about Robin; he’s told her his plans and she called him a huge idiot with the biggest smile he’s ever seen, but also crazy. But if crazy means him coming to New York City in January, Steve tells him, then she’s happy for him. For them.

“She’s just worried,” Jonathan tells him kindly as they exit the car, slipping onto the hood with a six pack of beer in Steve’s hand.

“She shouldn’t be,” Steve hums. “This is the most I’ve felt excited about anything or _anyone_ in a long, long time. And _yeah_, Jonathan,” he grins. “I’m talking about you.”

Jonathan snorts, a smile stretching across his cheeks, and Steve pulls a beer out of the plastic six-pack ring, popping the tab and hands it to him.

“Still stealing your dad’s beer, I see,” Jonathan ribs lightly.

Steve rolls his eyes, cracking a beer of his own before taking a long, long sip, setting the can down half empty.

“Robin says I shouldn’t tell him that I’m moving,” Steve then admits more quietly and Jonathan peers curiously at him, a pull to his brows before Steve pacifies him with a quick: “At least not until I have to. Also telling him that I’m moving in with _you_ is a big no-no. She said he might go nuclear on me, and I think she’s probably right.”

Jonathan nods, humming in quiet understanding and doesn’t vocalize his fears about what might happen if Steve’s dad ever found out about the move, or more specifically _them_, and instead takes a sip of his beer, eyes peering quietly out over the rim of the can.

“It’s only a few months,” Jonathan finally says at long last. He leans back against the windshield, a foot pressing flat against the hood and Steve lays down next to him. His tongue is pressed thickly against his cheek, as if he’s waiting for Jonathan to continue, and above them the darkening night sky is giving way to a wash of clear, sparkling stars that peak out behind the gauzy grey of fast moving clouds. “So don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

There’s a hum and a small exhale, Steve’s breath falling from his mouth in splashes of chuckled disbelief, but he doesn’t make a thing of it—like he knows that Jonathan is right, too. He has a well-documented habit of getting into fights and Jonathan is never going to let him forget it, not at least until he understands that trying to get the last word against a man like his father is never going to end well. At least not while he’s stuck living under his thumb.

“I’ll try not to,” Steve allows and he presses a kiss against the brow of Jonathan’s forehead, fingers sweeping through his hair. Then, his hand falls, creeping down his chest and coming to rest at the hem of his shirt, fingers thrumming idly against the exposed section of skin. Jonathan blinks, trying to push the memories of Tuesday afternoon out and to the back of his mind, but Steve leans in and kisses him, a soft slide of tongue begging to be let into his mouth. The beer in his hand spills as Jonathan kisses him back, but he doesn’t really mind, not really, not even when Steve’s mouth laughs against his, a muttered, “_Shit—_you got it on my pants!”

“You’ll be taking them off shortly, so what does it matter?” Jonathan fires back hotly, and Steve has the decency to at least _pretend_ that isn’t exactly what he wanted when his hand went for the line of skin right above his groin.

“You _wound_ me, Jonathan,” Steve grins. “Who said anything about sex? I brought you up here for a romantic evening to look at the stars and listen to music with me.”

There’s a second where Jonathan simply _looks_ at Steve, his smile more of a smirk then it is a grin, because the radio isn’t on anymore ever since they shut off the car and the stars are mostly obscured by the clouds. Jonathan doesn’t tell him this. Instead, he pulls him back in for another quick kiss before nudging him away, sitting up fully as he wipes the beer from his hands onto the fabric of his thighs.

“I wasn’t going to give you another blowjob on the hood of your car, anyways,” he simply says.

Steve’s eyes narrow, his tongue pressing thickly to the inside of his cheek and looking at him as though what Jonathan has just suggested was somehow traitorous and _wrong_. Jonathan grins back, a cheeky press to his lips as he pats Steve on the shoulder consolingly and Steve rolls his eyes, slipping off the hood of the car in one quick motion, rounding on Jonathan from the passenger side of the car.

“And who said anything about _you_ giving _me_ a blowjob?” he challenges. He tugs on Jonathan’s arm, pulling him off the hood and swings open the rear door. “You’re leaving tomorrow for four months; the least you can do is let me see your dick before you go. I need _something_ to get me through till Christmas.”

Jonathan ends up laughing, Steve grinning widely as they climb into the back of the car in a tumble of too many limbs and not enough space. Steve nearly knees him in the stomach and Jonathan shoves him out of the way, crawling overtop of him to get to the otherside of the bench seat.

“Ass,” Steve mutters, fingers digging into his side as he settles in next to him. “You could have used the other door.”

“I could have,” Jonathan grins. Steve pauses, a purse to his lips, before launching into a full on attack, his fingers poking into his ribs and tickling him mercilessly before they smooth out seconds later, pushing under his shirt to touch skin again.

“You’re lucky I like you,” Steve murmurs through a kiss to his jaw, and Jonathan laughs again, Steve’s fingers instantly poking into his side as a silent warning to stop.

They’re going to be okay, he thinks. Really, they are. Summer is over and Jonathan is leaving for school in less than twelve hours, but they’ve got time to figure it out and promises to keep and phone calls to make and letters to write. They’ve got this, they really do, he thinks.

Steve’s fingers fall into place, a hand over head as he threads his fingers into the curl of Jonathan’s palm, and Steve smiles.

It has never looked more beautiful, more real, and unlike summer, it is anything but fleeting and illusory. Steve’s smile, Jonathan thinks, is here to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it! It's taken almost a year (the first chapter was posted on August 14th, 2019) but 'summerland' is over! Thank you to everyone who has been along for the ride and sent kudos and love via comments. It's been hard, and at sometimes it was a long slog, but you've all kept me motivated to finish this and work towards completion. 
> 
> Much love, Kypros.
> 
> P.S. Keep an eye open in the future for a sequel of sorts. Summer is over, but seasons change ;)


End file.
